The firm chose the £23,500 guillotine for its low power consumption, compact size and quality.

"Our Schneider 75EM that this replaced served us well- we’d had it in for ten years since we brought it new. We shopped around and considered all makes and models, but we considered Polar to be the best on the market in terms of quality, value and performance," said owner of JR Press Geoff Fone.

He added: "It’s an eco-model so it’s eco-credentials were important to us, as we’re a company striving to become carbon neutral."

The Polar install has come ahead of a planned expansion of JR’s in-house packaging finishing capabilities. The company intends to order a new KAMA die cutting and new KAMA gluing machine ready for installation in the first quarter of 2014.

The investments, which will bring JR’s recent spend on finishing kit to the £400,000 mark, will hopefully see JR Press become the first UK printer to install a KAMA automatic die cutting line, reported Fone.

"The beauty of that machine is that typically people are running about 2,000-3,000 an hour, but this machine runs at 6,000 an hour and has a optional stripping unit on it, which means you only need one person running it," said Fone.

Of the company’s strategy of moving away from commercial print and into printed packaging, he added: "We’re a B3 printer and have been around for 25 years and have been doing commercial print for 23 of them, but two years ago we moved into a brand new purpose-built factory, invested in new machinery to diversify into printed packaging and away from commercial print.

"Since then our turnover has grown by 30% and the amount of packaging we do is now 50% in as short a time as two years."

The Polar 78 ECO has a cutting width of 780mm, a maximum loading height of 120mm and knife speed of 45 cycles per minute. It also features Polar OptiKnife for fast knife changing and positioning accuracy of 1/100mm.