The deal, worth 7m-8m over the next five years, includes three DocuColor 6060s, a mono DocuPrint 180 and two DocuTechs, and follows more than a year of talks between the firms.

Gordon Samson, managing director of Pillans & Waddies and an Ormolu board director, said talks started after Ormolu took over Waddies in May 2000.

We looked at all the group facilities for variable data, digital colour and personalisation, he said.

Waddies was already a Xerox Premier Partner and ran two Xerox DocuPrint 180s, which have now been joined by a third. The Pillans & Waddies site in Livingston has also installed an EPS controller, which allows it to take any native data stream straight through to printing without having to convert files.

Livingston has also taken a DocuColor 6060, while two of those machines and the two DocuTechs have gone to Greenaways in London, along with DigiPath workflow software.

Ormolu has removed three older presses, including a DocuColor 2060, to make way for the new machines.

We were in no doubt that Xerox offered us the best possible configuration for corporate finance, document production and volume direct mail, said Samson.

Xerox UK Graphic Arts director Peter Taylor said the order was one of the firms biggest this year.

Theyre a serious player for us as a group in the UK, he said. It proves again that while colour is growing rapidly, theres still serious investment in mono too.

Mono presses have accounted for 53% of Xeroxs UK graphic arts sales this year, according to Taylor, with colour at 47%. This compares to a 60:40 split in favour of colour last year, although colour has still grown by 20% so far this year.

Story by Gordon Carson