The investment has allowed the Peterborough-based company to add "finishing house" to its list of activities.

The company has installed a new Horizon Stitchliner 5500 and a Perfecta 76 HTVC guillotine.

Michael Marshall, director at Gildenburgh, said: "We are now finishing work for other printers, which is something I hadn't envisaged. It is definitely another string to our bow that we were hoping to add in the future but it is not something we expected to be able to offer so soon."

The 20-year old Heidelberg house handles started out handling B3 work, but started bringing in B2 work around five years ago. The move eventually led the company to bring its finishing in-house

Marshall added: "The StitchLiner has helped us be more responsive and the quality of finish has impressed our customers. We are very finicky here and quality is always paramount. Another bonus is that we can now collate in-house."

The StitchLiner features fully-automated make readies and works from flat four-page sections. It runs at speeds of 5,500bph, has an icon-based LCD touch screen And job memory storage. As with all Horizon's automated systems, the StitchLiner is JDF-ready and can be networked via the i2i bindery management system.

The Perfecta HTVC guillotine features a 10inch colour touchscreen, menu-prompted programming, the ability to store up to 6,000 cut positions within 250 programs, odd and even repeating, block repeating up to three loops, cut counter for repeat functions, clamping without cutting and insertion and deletion of program steps.