Building works and installations at the modern facility were completed in October, just in time for the firm’s pre-Christmas rush.

Based just seven miles down the road from Print Evolved’s old Tonbridge unit, the site will accommodate on average around 40 staff following its £500,000 refit. The firm has taken on a 10-year lease for the property.

“It’s a significant investment,” Spencer Slee, managing director of Print Evolved, told Printweek.

“We’re in it for the long term, and we believe it will accommodate our ambitions over the 10-year-period, so we’re really excited.”

Works commenced at the site in April 2024, with building works going on right up to the firm’s October deadline. Further works, including the fitting of solar panels, will follow in due course.

“It’s a relatively new, modern site, but we had to get it in the form and layout we wanted,” Slee said.

“It’s 30% bigger than our old facility, and we wanted to spend the money kitting it out to leverage the best efficiencies we could. It was a lovely opportunity to look at a blank page and pretty much lay it down as we wanted.”

In addition to the six-figure refurbishment investment, Print Evolved has also spent “several hundred thousand pounds” on new Schmedt binding kit to complement existing binding machines taken on in the acquisition of VR Print – the old Tonbridge operation – three years ago.

“I pretty much dedicated all my time at Drupa looking at hardback bookbinding, and although it’s an area that VR Print has been in, it’s a new area for me,” Slee said.

“We knew we had to invest: we had inherited some light-volume kit, and some really high-volume hardback kit, for volumes of around 1,000-plus – that wasn’t really our space.

The new machines have more than doubled Print Evolved’s hardback capacity to around 1,100 hardback books a day, excluding longer runs.

“It was a baptism of fire,” he added.

“We had them delivered in October, and we did just under two and a half-times the volume of hardback books than we did the previous year. It’s been a game-changing investment, despite being relatively modest, in print terms.”

Print Evolved has likewise taken delivery of an unnamed inkjet press to replace one of its two HP print engines, for now keeping specifics under wraps. Additional print capacity at the all-digital facility is supplied by Ricoh toner presses.

Print Evolved employs around 160 across the group, generating sales of just under £18m.