The Eurobind, which was signed for at Ipex, has now been installed, while the TH56 folder, which will replace a brace of existing Ti52 models, is due to go in shortly.

The latest machines cap a £500,000 investment programme over the past two years that has included an HP Indigo 5500 press, a Mimaki JV33, and a Foliant laminator.

John MacMillan, managing director at the £2.5m-turnover business, said that the company, which is nearly 200 years old, attributed its longevity to prudence, although he added some people would find it hard to view this "impetuous" investment within its overall strategy.

He said: "From bringing plate-making in-house some years ago – we’re now on our third CTP system – we have continued to try to reduce outwork to cut down external costs and also to enable us to meet the increasingly tight deadlines our customers ask us to work to."

The Eurobind investment marks the company's maiden move into in-house perfect binding. It is a move that will enable the Cheshire-based company to bind digitally printed books from runs as low as a single copy.

Steve Preston, production director at Johnsons, added: "We have been hand-binding some work from our digital presses, but now we can use this machine to produce perfect-bound books with runs as low as one up to 5,000 because of the fast makeready times and ease of use."

Johnsons of Nantwich, which was established in 1827, has been a Heidelberg customer for more than a century. In addition to a raft of litho presses, the company still operates a cylinder it took delivery of in 1963.