Managing director David Wyvill said he had been looking to boost the £2.8m turnover firm’s digital capabilities for 12 months, with the company beginning its search at last year’s Ipex.

"We’ve looked at everything from the Indigos and Nexpresses and Igens, but out shortlist was whittled down to the Ricoh, Canon imagePress and Konica Minolta Bizhub Pro.

"All of the machines were very good, but we felt the Ricoh was the best all-round package, but we came to Northprint on Tuesday to make the final decision."

Wyvill returned to Northprint before the show opened this morning (Thursday) to sign for the C901, which includes the EFI Fiery E-81 front end.

This latest spend follows the installation of a £120,000 Grützmacher mailing line from Addressing & Mailing Solutions earlier this year.

The 25-staff DM and commercial printer’s client base is a mixture of blue-chips and B2B. It’s primarily a B2 litho house, with two Komoris: a five-colour plus coater Lithrone and a four-colour Spica, but has offered digital print for almost decade and its other services include cross-media and web-to-print (W2P).

The C901 spend was a ‘cash’ purchase and the machine will be installed in the next four to six weeks, when it will be integrated into the company’s W2P system and Fuji XMF workflow.

"Digital and litho are complementary, I don’t necessarily think that digital is going to take over from litho... we have a sister company Platinum Mailing Services and digital certainly complements that; if you want variable data and imagery this is where the excitement about digital is. Producing true variable documents is where the power of digital really comes to bear," said Wyvill.