The 12-staff Birmingham-based business was founded in April last year by Jason Langford-Brown, who was previously a director at Inkfish and Stralfors.

It is on course in its first year to reach a £1m turnover and has taken on what it describes as 15 "key" clients.

Its latest investment will "bridge a gap" between the company's low volume Konica Minolta equipment and the higher volume digitally-printed work it has printed at its partner GI Direct.

According to Langford-Brown, "managing data effectively to create variable, personalised print has to be the way forward for all involved in the communications sector".

"In doing this, we needed to bring together the multiple channels that exist in today’s market, including print, media, web and the data that drives them all," he said.

The Xeikon 5000plus gives the business a mid-range duplex print offering that will drive its growth in digital colour, said Langford-Brown.

"Being at the forefront of digital print technology, having a highly secure environment, and working to strict lean-manufacturing standards is enabling us to really show value to our clients," he added.

Its Xeikon can print five colours at speeds of up to 130ppm with a duty cycle of 4.2m pages each month.

However, as part of the deal with supplier Punch Graphix UK, Lucid has the potential to swap the 5000plus model for a Xeikon 8000 if at a later date it needs to be able to printer larger volumes of work at higher speeds.