The 600-staff press ancillaries supplier is building a 4m factory in Gersthofen, near Augsburg, and aims to roll out a range of blanket wash systems for sheetfed presses. 

Earlier this year a deal to buy fellow press ancillaries firm Baldwin, which makes blanket wash kit, collapsed.

UK operations manager Peter Benton said: "We have gone as far as we can with damping and want to focus on blanket wash. We aim to run test installations by the end of this year."

Technotrans chairman Heinz Harling said: "We intend to tap the market for cleaning systems with a development of our own."

He described background talks with potential customers as "promising" and said cleaning system products had a global market volume of around 100m.