M Partners joint managing director Murray Lock said the company had spent the past year researching the market to find a machine that combined high-performance with low-production cost rather than just entering the market with a "me too" product.

"Anyone can be a reseller in this market - that's the easy bit," he said. "The difficult bit is doing your homework to find a product that is going to add value and then identifying the right resellers - whether they've got specialist contacts or cover a specific sector - with no cross-over."

Key to the deal was DGI's latest range of machines, launched at Fespa in London earlier this year, which use Konica Minolta's KM1024MN printheads and includes the Velajet VE-3204D, a 3.2m wide eco-solvent printer capable of 120sqm/hr at 720x360dpi and with a maximum resolution of 1,440dpi.

"We were looking for Japanese technology on a cheaper base - we represent Japanese products [in offset litho] and so we know how good the quality is and we do see a real opportunity in this sector for a high quality machine with low running costs," he said.

"Wide format is still growing but it is also becoming more competitive, so it's not just the upfront cost of the machine that's important, it's going to start coming down to the cost per square metre."

At around £75,000 for the machine, the Velajet VE-3204D is similar in price to Mimaki's JV5-320S (£86,995) and Lynx Europe's Lynx 320PQ (€57,000).

However Lock claimed that the production cost of the DGI machine, at £1/sqm, was around half the price of rival machines; he said the comparison was done using TimeHarvest's software and based on ink usage.

The Velajet VE-3204D is a four-colour machine, with eight printheads (2x CMYK) capable of printing 120sqm/hr in draft mode (720x360dpi), 60sqm/hr in production mode (720x720dpi), 45sqm/hr in quality mode (720x1080dpi) and 30sqm/hr in high quality mode (720x1,440dpi).

Lock said M Partners Wide was in the process of appointing a reseller network and that it was "looking out for different products to cover a range of processes". This will include a textile printer, also from DGI, and a UV machine, although Lock said the firm had yet to find the right solution for UV.

DGI has previously had a UK distributor in Tamworth-based Grafityp, although it's UK install base remains small relative to mainland Europe, where the bulk of its customers are in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, according to Lock.