According to partner Matt Mitchell, who runs the company with his wife Amber, the investment has cut a bottleneck in the finishing department.

He said: "We had an issue creasing and folding, we wanted one machine rather than two and while looking we ended up buying the DC-645e and the Duetto. It was the natural next step for us; you either stay stagnant or carry on."

While the company initially started out as a litho printer in 2000, it has become a digital specialist in recent years having bought two Océ presses and selling its litho machine.

It also became a trade finishing house for other printers in the area and Mitchell told PrintWeek that the latest investment had opened up additional doors in this area.

He said: "It has sped up the finishing department tremendously and we can now handle litho work as well as corporate digital books; we haven't been able to offer booklet finishing to the trade before. It has opened up a whole new market."

Unlike traditional Duetto systems, Footprint's unique requirements led to Duplo tailoring the configuration to improve performance for litho production. The digital SCC (slit/cut/crease) unit now sits between the digital sheet feeder and the collator, increasing the speed of traditional collation.

Mitchell added that the company was now looking at an Esko die-cutting table and could be adding one in the near future "if we can talk Duplo into a nice price".