The Scottish printer has also brought a host of finishing in-house on the back of the investment, which replaces an inline perfect binder.

Managing director Stuart Mason said: "Demand has increased over the past few years for a perfect bound finish. Whilst the inline perfect binding solution may be ok for functional not-for-pay-print, it wasn’t right for us in a commercial environment.

"With thick books we can now offer two alternate finishes, ‘double-wire’ booklets or perfect bound books. This has enabled us to proactively offer customers different solutions, which in turn has definitely helped us retain clients."

Inkshop's machine will handle a host of short-run book applications, including catalogues, reports and publications, in a variety of different sizes with average runs of 500 to 1,000 copies.

The DPB-500 is a single-clamp perfect binder designed for short-run, on-demand work. It has a fully automated set-up and different binding requirements can be sourced through a touch screen set up. It has a maximum running speed of 525 book cycles an hour.

Inkshop has had a strong last quarter with December, January and February sales each topping previous records for the months.

Mason added: "We don’t send any finishing out now and we are in full control of our customers’ work. Previously, our conversation rate on any jobs involving trade finishing was 2% and now that everything is in-house we are in great shape to win more business and continue our recent sales growth."