The machine, which cost around £500,000, was installed at RMC’s Hull premises in January, and was fully operational by February.

The other half of the investment will be spent on a new Zünd cutter, a G3-XL3200, to work alongside the Durst, and an expansion to RMC’s premises, which has reached full capacity.

RMC operations director Nicole Spencer, along with her team, first saw the machine at last year’s Fespa. They settled on the Durst due in part to the quality of its black ink and its high-resolution capabilities.

Spencer said: “We’ve got three Vuteks already and to get the same sort of quality at 1,000dpi it now takes half the time with the Durst.

“In all honesty we’ve not put a lot through it but we’ve done quite a lot of Dibond jobs and adhesion to Dibond is really good, along with the quality of the fine text.”

The Durst has been primarily purchased as an additional "project machine”, with which to take on big project work at faster speeds while standard jobs are run on RMC’s three Vuteks: two GS3250LXs and a GS5000R. It will also be used to print flatbed test samples sent out to prospective customers.

The seven-colour (CMYK plus light cyan, light magenta and white) Durst is intended for indoor and outdoor signage, backlit displays and luxury goods. It prints at up to 205sqm/hr at 1,000dpi and has UV-curable pigment inks for interior and exterior applications.  

Spencer anticipates the new Zünd, which will join RMC’s existing Zünd G3 cutter, will come in in around three months’ time, with expansion of premises due to complete by close of 2017.

Alongside the Durst, Vuteks and Zünds, RMC also runs two Mimaki JV300s and a JV1300. The 22-staff outfit also has a second Hull outpost, RMC Modular, which specialises in flat signage and has a number of additional staff.

RMC, which specialises in multi-layered graphics, has sales of around £2.5m.