The £4.3m turnover company has been specified with Inpress Control for automated colour and register adjustment along with Prinect Pressroom Manager workflow.

Managing director Trevor Price said in financing the deal its banking partner Clydesdale "had been fantastic".

The introduction of the press, which is expected to produce its first sheets at the end of March and be in full production by mid-April, will cut out around £250,000 of costs from the business a year. This includes £30,000 in energy bills and four redundancies, among other costs.

It will also reduce ink and chemistry use, maintenance costs, and will cut makeready paper wastage from 800 sheets to around 250 sheets for some types of work.

"The bank manager said it's a no-brainer," said Price. "We told them the running costs of our two existing B2 presses and the reasons for buying the Speedmaster and they were convinced and given the resale value of the Speedmaster it is little risk for them."

The 46-staff company has customers across the UK, and serves a range of businesses, from brochures and collateral for the hotel trade, to universities, banks and the public sector.

It also invested over the past year in an iGen 4 and a Magnus platesetter and plans to launch a consumer photobook service later this year. It is also undertaking Heidelberg's ISO 12647-2 certification process, which it plans to complete by May.

Price said that for the next year the company hopes to maintain turnover but with improved margins as, with Scotland's printing industry having suffered in the recession, a lot of capacity has been taken out.

As president of Graphic Enterprise Scotland, Price said membership has dropped from more than 300 some 15 years ago to around 50 today.

"There are fewer and fewer printers up here," he said. "We're going to get to the tipping point."