Only the second centre of its kind in the country (the first opened in York in May), the new DBC is based in Cornhill in 130m2 of newly refurbished premises.

"There's a real opportunity for this type of business in the City where clients are looking for rapid turnaround times - they can't wait two or three days," said Richard Adler, who runs the centre with cousin David Marks.

Both Adler and Marks' parents have run Kall Kwik centres in the capital. Adler co-owns the High Holborn branch with his parents and Marks is the sole owner of the Southampton Row branch, which he took over from his parents.

These two centres, which each have litho capacity and sales of over 1m, will act as "mother centres" for the Cornhill DBC, which is totally digital.

The DBC's flagship machine is a Xerox DocuColor 2060, 60ppm colour digital printer. It also runs a 12ppm DocuColor 12 along with Canon and Ricoh mono copying equipment and a Canon BJW9000 for large-format poster work.

Kall Kwik chairman Nigel Toplis said he expected the chain to open two or three DBCs in London and by the end of 2003 it hoped to have between eight to 12 across the country. "It's not the kind of centre everyone can run, you have to have a mother centre," he said.

By Lauretta Roberts