"The start-up of the third press is an important milestone as it marks the end of the first phase of investmen," said group operations director Mike Young.

The installation of the third Cerutti brings capacity at Sheffield up to 1.4bn pages per week. The firm will be running ink on paper tests next week.

"We are pleased with the progress and we expect the first commercial job to be on press one week ahead of schedule," said Sheffield operations director Phil Boynes.

Following last week's agreement on the closure of Polestar Purnell, the firm also plans to move one of the Somerset site's Cerutti presses to Sheffield in October.