The company in Hanwell, west London, spent around £15,000 on the new kit and replaced a Plockmatic SR 85 bookletmaker.

The Watkiss BookMaster Pro is capable of producing up to 2,500 booklets per hour with paper sizes up to 482x320mm.

First Folio managing director Neil Pollard said: “The old kit had problems of reliably delivering two staples to the document spine and often the booklets would emerge out-of-square.

“We had to reject a proportion of booklets from just about every print run, wasting 10%-15%. But with the BookMaster waste is now almost zero.

“For a run of 200 to 300 books, I'll lose about one.”

He added: “Another key advantage over our previous machine is paper size, as it will handle a 450mm SRA3 sheet and trim the fore edge, which we couldn’t do before.

“We bought this machine primarily for quality control. We print to a variety of sizes and now we can adjust the spine position.

“If my press doesn’t print the job bang in the middle of the sheet, I can offset the BookMaster by a millimeter or two either way to get it absolutely right.”

First Folio began as a design company but has gradually brought all print and finishing processes in-house and is now almost completely self-contained. It serves local authority and commercial business customers.

The business runs a Konica Minolta C6000 press, an Ideal 4850-95 EP guillotine, a GMP double-sided laminator and shrink-wrap and folding machines. The two-staff firm makes a turnover of about £140,000.