The press, which went live a month ago, joins an Océ ColorStream 3700 continuous feed printer from Canon which started production at the end of 2013.

The ColorStream offers additional capacity while the VarioPrint replaces two Kodak NexPress Digimasters.

Henry Ling made the investment after studying the market for two years, and only when it became convinced that the quality offered by inkjet technology had improved.

Helen Kennett, managing director of the 120-staff firm, said inkjet would be “the technology of the future”.

“When inkjet first came out you paid a lot of money for paper but the quality wasn’t there,” she said. “Now there are more papers available and the combination of that with the technology makes the quality acceptable. It has to be at least as a good as toner.”

Kennett said digital accounted for an increasing part of the 140-year-old company’s operations – and was approaching 50% of its page volumes – but it was also “sustaining litho levels”.

Digital technology is enabling it to produce shorter run lengths, sometimes as low as 100 copies.

The ColorStream 3700 can print up to 100 metres per minute while the VarioPrint 6250 is a cut-sheet, black-and-white printer.