Andy McIntyre, production director at the POS printer, said the company had initially bought the 3.1x2m machine to allow it to stock irregular sizes by stocking oversize sheets and cutting them to size in-house.

"People want all sorts of weird and wonderful sizes nowadays so we were looking for an oversized cutter to allow us to hold our own stock," said McIntyre. "Retail clients want the same or next day delivery so if you're ordering in that can be a problem.

"Equally the quality - some suppliers don't understand how good it has to be - things like if it's double-side you have to wear gloves when you're handling it. The logistics and the expense were killing us and now everything we were sending out we can do in-house."

McIntyre added: "The good thing about the Elitron is that it has a routing head as well as the drag knife and oscillating blade knife, so we can cut everything from vinyl and foil to acrylic, MDF and aluminium.

"The investment would justify itself just on being able to hold the stock but with the extra capability, it's going to pay for itself with the extra work we're bringing in."

GBM has a range of wide-format print equipment including an Océ Arizona 350 XT, a 3.2m Vutek QS, an Agfa Jeti 3020 Titan, a Mimaki JV33 and Roland VersaCamm and a bank of HP Z60s.

McIntyre said that another benefit of the new machine was a scan and cut feature that doesn't require registration dots and a projection feature that allows the operator to maximise the yield on off-cuts by projecting images onto them to plan how to use them for other jobs.

"It means you can use every single piece of your material - it's much more efficient and cost-effective and it means we're actually planning jobs better as well - it's made us start to look at other areas of the business, like our MIS, and realise how far behind they are."