The Guardian is being tested by Dutch firm Publishers Electronic Printing Concept Worldwide (PEPC) on its newspaper print-on-demand system and could go live in a matter of weeks.


The firm has two consoles in Amsterdam but plans to rapidly expand that to 750 in hotels and airports throughout the world this year.


The PEPC system was developed in conjunction with IBM and prints on-demand same-day editions of 70 newspapers in around two minutes for 2.


Titles already available on the on-screen menu-driven system include The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, De Telegraaf and El Pais.


"The newspaper sends us a PDF file, which we check and then up-link to a satellite. Its available on our units in about 20 minutes. It means that if youre in the right time-zone you can get tomorrows paper today," said PEPC chief executive officer Raoul Maphar.


Each paper provides a maximum of 40 A3 pages, which are printed single-colour and stapled by the PEPC console.


Under the system newspapers receive a royalty of around 5% of the sale price.


The firm is considering a number of locations in London for a PEPC system.