Capable of perforating, slitting, cutting and creasing in a single-pass, the list price for the DC-646i starts from £24,000.

The device was installed at Morecambe, Lancashire-based Printing Plus’s factory at the beginning of November and joined an existing EBA guillotine, a Duplo bookletmaker, Xerox digital printers and HP large-format kit.

“We wanted to raise our productivity and speed up throughput of work,” Printing Plus managing director Howard Turner told Printweek.

“We had a bottleneck at the guillotine and the team asked me to purchase a second guillotine, but then I remembered that another member of our UK Design & Print Network [a group of ex-Kall Kwik/Prontaprint franchises] had recommended the DC-646i, so I contacted Duplo and they came up with a deal.”

He added: “Duplo have been very good, and this is a very clever system that is incredibly easy to use. We’re mainly using it for cutting; in effect it basically does guillotining work unattended.”

A former Prontaprint business that left the franchise in 2009, Printing Plus currently employs 10 staff and serves a broad range of clients including local businesses, training businesses, and the tourism industry.