Costing around £80,000, the jogger addition will be the first for the Lincoln printer, freeing up staff for other work.

It replaces a Polar 2001 92 cutter that was starting to bottleneck Ruddocks’ production at the cutting stage. A Polar 66 cutter remains in place to run alongside the new machine, which is due on 17 May.

Production director Ady Potter said: “We have something of an allegiance to Heidelberg, with a lot of their machines onsite. This means things like servicing and safety checks are done by the same people, resulting in fewer callout fees for our business.

“We considered machines from Intelligent Finishing Systems, but all roads led to a Polar replacing our current machine.

“Although this is part of our natural upgrading pathway across all departments, we are not just replacing a guillotine for another guillotine because of the 92’s additional support features.”

Ruddocks’ smaller Polar 66 guillotine is dedicated to digital print production, while the Polar N Plus, which cuts widths of up to 920mm, will handle the rest of the firm’s output, including work from the company’s five-colour Speedmaster XL 75.

Typical applications for Ruddocks include art catalogues, brochures, booklets, leaflets, posters and folders.

Other recent upgrades across the company have included a new bizhub Press 1250 mono printer from Konica Minolta around six months ago and the selection of Pace as its new MIS from EFI.

Ruddocks is “always looking at where upgrades are needed”, though Potter said there are no concrete plans for further installations in the foreseeable future.

“We are always ambitious, but also realistic, so our targets for now are nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. “If we need equipment to adapt to market demands, then that is obviously not something we have not done before.”

Ruddocks employs 45 members of staff and turns over £3.3m.