The company, which specialises in shelf-ready packaging, said that over the past 18 months many retailers had cut the shelf space they made available to small- and medium-size brand owners, which had forced changes to pack sizes.

Nick Ingham, East Lancashire Box managing director and production director, said that the Bobst Expertfold had helped them to significantly increase their production speed for narrow boxes.

He said: "The Bobst will run a typical one of these narrow jobs at 15,000 an hour or more, as opposed to the thousand an hour we were running them at before."

Ingham said that a key benefit of the folder-gluer was its ability to reach smaller and regular sizes.

"It can fold and glue blanks as small as 126mm by 60mm or as large as 1,100mm by 800mm," he added. "This versatility was the other key reason we chose it."