The two-year-old Bristol company bought a Muller Martini BravoPlus from secondhand equipment manufacturer Integrated Manufacturing Solutions in order to increase productivity.

Thirty One wanted to upgrade its Muller Martini Bravo T, but managing director Damien Fricker was not prepared to take the risk on a new machine.

He said: "In the current financial climate, we were edgy about investing, I don't know what is going to happen over the summer, but I felt it was the right time to invest, the machine we had wasn't the right model for what we wanted to do.

"I didn't want to be looking back in six month's time and say I wish I had gone for it then. I can now go and search for new work on the machine."

Fricker added that the secondhand machine was not a drop in quality on a new machine.

"The machine is probably just as good as a new machine to be honest," he said. "It hasn't had a tough life, we got it off a French company and I really don't know why they had it. It’s a couple of years old, and its done 3m impressions, we did 400,000 in our first week and a half. It was a great find."

Six-staff business Thirty One expects to reach a £250,000 turnover this year. It is a fold/stitch/trim specialist, defying the current climate of printers bringing the processes in-house.

Fricker said that he saw a gap in the market for a trustworthy finishing house producing quality work.

He said: "Printers don’t really want to do finishing in-house, but they have to be able to trust people to finish work quickly and to a decent quality and often that means doing it in-house. The hardest task has been convincing printers to trust us, but once you have the trust you are in a good position."