Keighley, West Yorkshire-based Nilorn UK, a subsidiary of the Swedish group, took delivery of the £70,000 cutting table in early June.

It will enable the business to carry out sampling work that was originally done by Nilorn branches and partners in Asia, which could increase delivery times.

“A lot of our production goes out to China and Bangladesh where lead times are a case of weeks rather than days,” said packaging manager Andy Winterbottom. “Now, our initial concept service can be carried out in a much speedier way.

“Cutting down on lead times means better provision of sampling and die-cut digital proofs to our clients, as well as the clients of Nilorn’s other western branches around Europe and the US. We mostly deal with fast fashion clients, so slow lead times are not ideal.

“We chose the Zünd because of its reliability and without really considering any other options. I had worked with the machines before in a previous job, so I knew we could rely on them to do what we needed.”

Zünd’s S3 M-800 is the smallest table in its S3 cutter range at 1,330x830mm. It comes in a modular design, allowing users to customise, reconfigure and upgrade its capabilities at will.

Nilorn UK’s current staff is running the machine for the time being, but a new constructional designer may be brought onboard in the near future depending on customer demand.

Winterbottom said that there were no explicit demands to continue adding kit to the UK site, rather that he would “suck it and see”, adding new equipment as dictated by what is needed at the time.

The Keighley site employs 38 members of staff and turns over £19m on its own.