The device was installed at the company’s headquarters in Quarto d’Altino in March. The business will use the machine to produce work on all wide-format materials, including aluminum, Correx, Foamex and cardboard.

The 2.5m-wide Rho 1312, which was first previewed at Fespa Digital 2014, is capable of printing 620sqm/hr and features what Durst calls Gradual Flow Printing, which prints a 1.25x2.5m image with a wide array that does not need to scan back and forth across the media.

The media remains stationery during printing, while low UV pinning of the ink film during printing fixes the image, enabling curing to take place in an external UV dryer, leading to improved printing on heat-sensitive materials and corrugated board.

Colour configurations are standard CMYK and optional light cyan, light magenta and process colour addition (orange plus either green or violet). The printer has a drop size of 12pl.

Pixartprinting chief executive Alessandro Tenderini said: “We were searching for an industrial solution that could meet our growing production requirements, whilst at the same time ensuring our processes were as automated as possible.”

The business carried out what Tenderini called a "careful analysis" of all of the various options on the market but decided that the Durst machine was best suited to its requirements.

The company is an existing Durst user, and operates seven Durst Rho P10 printers, including four Rho P10 200 flatbed printers and three Rho P10 320R roll-to-roll printers.

Pixartprinting, which was founded in 1994 by Matteo Rigamonti, specialises in providing online printing services for small-format products such as magazines, catalogues, postcards, stickers, labels and flyers as well as packaging and printed fabrics.

The business, which employs 420 staff and has around 170,000 customers in Europe, was acquired by Cimpress (owner of Vistaprint) last year.