The ten-colour has taken the place of a six-year-old five-colour Lithrone 29 at the Birmingham-based company, which was acquired by Giro Group three years ago, and joins two other Lithrone 29 presses, one four-colour and a five-colour, both with coaters.

Giro Group managing director Javed Sarwar said : "Since the installation of the five-colour Lithrone S29 in 2010, we’ve added more work and now we want to turn that around faster and more competitively, and we've increased capacity to expand the business further into the longer runs and higher pagination market.

"One of the first jobs we produced on the new press was a 100-page magazine, which we turned around in less than half the time than we would have with the five-colour press."

Sarwar added that the company has been seeing growth in demand from design and print management companies.

The Giro Group, which was founded 40 years ago, is a supplier to the catering industry and plans to launch more products for the fast food market; it plans to produce the packaging for the products in-house using its five-colour Lithrone.

Sarwar said: "The new press will release the five-colour Lithrone, which is currently running 24 hours a day, six days a week, and will provide capacity for this machine to print new packaging work for Giro. We could also bring the finishing work for our cartons in-house if we find that this side of our businesses grows."