The machines were installed in Raffle Tickets’ Irchester, Northamptonshire premises over the last couple of weeks, with investment breaking down at around £50,000 for the guillotine and £30,000 for the Agfa machine.

The guillotine replaces a 23-year-old Polar 76 and the Agfa replaces a Presstek Vector platesetter.

Raffle Tickets managing director Mark Hinson said the purchase had been made in order to reduce bottlenecks created by the Polar 76 but that it had “served the company well.” The new machine can cut up to 1,000 sheets at a time, double that of the 76.

“It was getting very old and as we were doing more and more ticket work it just meant the old machine couldn’t cope anymore, so it needed upgrading,” said Hinson.

“This is faster, it can cut more paper at once and it just speeds the whole process up.”

The machine has a knife speed of 45 cycles/min and a cutting width and feeding depth of 920mm. It has been configured with an Optiknife system for ease-of-knife-change and can handle a range of substrates.

“It’s got a much faster back gauge and of course it’s got a computer display. When a product comes off the press we can cut and pack it a lot quicker with the new guillotine than we could with the old one and it means we can turn work around quicker and keep customers happy," added Hinson. 

The machine complements eight-staff Raffle Tickets’ two existing Speedmaster SM 52s, a two-colour and a four-colour, and will handle runs from 250 to one million. 

Hinson said the Agfa platesetter had been installed similarly to help reduce a bottleneck.

He said: “The other one we had was a bit old and creaky so this enables us to make 25 plates per hour again. It was run lengths that were the problem. We couldn’t get 25,000-run lengths out of the old plates whereas the new ones we can get 90,000; that was the main reason it got swapped.” 

Raffle Tickets was set up at Prestige’s inception in 1989 and comprises around 75% of its work, with the rest made up from general commercial print. The £500,000-tunover outfit also runs a Konica Minolta bizhub digital press.