The Speedmaster press, plus coater, arrived shortly at the company's Washington, Tyne and Wear, site, just before it is due to take delivery of new Heidelberg Prinect workflow software.

Chris Murley, director at the 34-staff business, said he hoped the press would "lead the company into the digital market" by capitalising on customer demand for short-run jobs.

He said: "We had been analysing our work and realised a lot of the colour demand was for short runs. Seeing makereadies of six or seven minutes with only about 20 waste sheets was impressive.

"It is more cost effective for us because our price structure doesn’t change, but we can produce litho quality work at lower cost, protecting our profit margin. We are eating into the digital market with this press."

Its new Anicolor, which complements a five-colour Speedmaster SM 74-5 and a Printmaster, has begun producing runs of between 700 and 5,000. However, the company expects the machine to excel in runs from 100 to 10,000.

"Operators have said to me that they didn’t believe it would be as quick to set up and run," Murley added.

Nearly 70% of the work Printbylaser carries out is for the NHS, while the rest is made up of print management customers and local government bodies.