Managing director Nigel Moore said: "The new unit gives us the added ability to offer current clients and potential new customers an even better working environment and increased production capabilities.

"We wanted to accommodate larger runs for work, which includes brochures and, recently, a folded paper aeroplane for a marketing campaign. In our old base we had an external storage and not much office space, now it's under one roof."

Moore's 18-staff company makes £700,000 turnover from kit that includes two MBOs, a B30 and B123, a B2 Stahl folding machine and a CP Bourg BB3002 for short-run perfect binding.

"Since our launch in September 2009 we have been experiencing continued controlled growth investing in new machinery and employees to give a complete and comprehensive trade finishing service."

"The beauty of the machine is that digital print houses are printing bigger and using larger sheet sizes than traditional litho or screen work," said production assistant Joanne Hobbs, adding PPFS was keen to home in on the digital market.

She said other big plusses of the new kit, which cost around £200,000, were faster makeready times and safety. Additionally jobs need only one make-ready, which means repeat jobs do not need to be made ready. This has offered big savings in time.

Configuration of the machine meanwhile made it safer, she added, with some conventional machines operators having to "get into the machine" to make them ready whereas the task on the Goldline can be done at the rear of the machine away from working parts.

Installer Diecut UK said 40-staff PPFS was one of the first companies to embrace this new technology. It not only increased its capacity as a trade finisher but protected their workforce using the machinery, the company said.

Nutan co-proprietor Reg Rathod said: "No longer relying on third-party finishers means we can offer lamination on all work and keep costs in-house. Sending it out took time and was costly.

"We have already seen a 50% increase in the amount of lamination we're doing."

The Mercury 530SF installed at Nutan is a fully automatic model with a top speed of 30m/min.

Nutan operates a number of digital and conventional presses, including a Konica Minolta Bizhub, installed six months ago, and a five-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 52.

Rathod, who assessed other laminators before opting for the Mercury, added: "We liked the Foliant's ease of operation and we believed the build quality was better. We have worked with IFS for a long time and if they have chosen to represent Foliant then we trust the system will meet our expectations."

"Bringing the work in-house enables us to keep quality under control, keep costs down and improve lead times. We have reduced makeready times from 15 or 20 minutes to five minutes."

Plant said the kit, which replaced an older Stahlfolder Ti 52, cost around £100,000 but the savings would make it a cost neutral purchase. The new Stahlfolder would allow the 50-staff business to keep closed gate-folded leaflets, two-up work and folded 16-page sections for PUR binding, he explained.

His team looked at kit from three manufacturers and was won over by the Stahlfolder's automation and ability to store programmes. Plant wanted operator "buy-in" so after checking out the options at Drupa took the finishing team to demos at the suppliers.

"They saw the advantages of the Stahlfolder especially improvements in efficiency," said Plant, whose cross-media business in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, has bumped up turnover more than a third to over £4m in two years through print, marketing and video.

"We are expanding, we are diversifying and we are trying to make print come alive again," said Plant. "But people who chase turnover are going about it the wrong way. It's about sustaining what we have and always striving for perfection."

"It's also simply the way it's put together, it is just very impressive - it looks like its going to last."

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Though the range can also be operated manually, the motorised roller gives the advantage of allowing the operator to feed the substrate from the top of the machine rather than the side, to ensure smooth, dust-free lamination.

It also helps to prevent warping on the machine which can over time as a result of only being guided by an operator from one side.

The Lamidesk Power 3016 is priced at £12,225 and the Power 4016 £13,925, with an extra £1,445-£1,785 charged for an illuminated bed, and an extra £298 for a higher bed. A non-motorised LamiDesk Easy 3016 and 4016 are also available for £9,250 and £10,950 respectively.

General manager at LamiDesk manufacturer Iltec, Erik Hartnagel, said: "People are very interested in flatbed applications at the moment and we've had a lot of interest at the show. This laminator is 100% accurate, eliminates the risk of dust and makes life much more comfortable for the operator."

"The decision to target direct mail is something that we've been toying with for a while though; we're a young company and I want to be doing this for another 30 years, so its inevitable that fold-stitch-trim volumes may tail off in the future, and that's why I want to offer more to our client base, such as die-cutting and inline inserting in the stitching department, and direct mail is another area that offers a great synergy and we just went for it," he added.

Following a review of its client base and work mix, he estimated that 99% of what the firm produces goes back to clients to be fulfilled in one way or another, so the firm was well positioned to exploit the DM opportunity and launch First 4 Direct Mail.

First 4, which was crowned PrintWeek's SME of the Year in 2010 and 2011, installed two Buhrs high-speed mailing lines four weeks ago and will go into full production early next month, with a plan to add two more next year. The refurbished BB600 lines were bought from Grafitec and each line features six inserter stations and are capable of handling DL to C5 envelopes.

"We can now offer a complete post-press solution. Basically, the work came off the back of our clients' presses to be cut, folded, stitched or trimmed and then we would send it back. But now effectively it can leave here in an envelope and go straight to Royal Mail or whoever," said Nestor.

"That's especially useful for our clients in the South, where it can have a massive impact on their transport costs," he added.

To support the investment, the 90-staff, £3.5m-turnover business is looking to create around a dozen new jobs, rising to a total of about 20 in 12 months.

Nestor is also considering adding personalisation to the lines at some stage in the future, depending on client demand, with camera recognition systems for 2D barcodes also high up on the future shopping list.

"This investment isn't about competing with our clients though, we're doing it because our clients want and need the service, we always think of ourselves as an extension of our clients' binderies, but now we can also be an extension to their mailing and DM operations," said Nestor.

Fulfilment is just the latest service that First 4 has added to its core offering, with other recent additions being die-cutting, courtesy of a refurbished Heidelberg SRA1 cylinder from Senior Graphic Machinery installed last month, and an inline inserting capability added to its stitching lines late last year.

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The £1.3m spend on the Indigo comes on top of a £1m investment programme over the past 18 months.

This has seen the company add to its printing firepower with a HP Indigo 5600 and four-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster SX52, as well as bolstering its finishing facilities with a Horizon BQ470 PUR binder, a Heidelberg TH56 folder and Polar 115X Plus guillotine with paper handling setup.

An Autobond Mini76 TPMHS thermal laminator with magnet attaching facility was installed just last week.

The firm, which provides a wide range of commercial print and finishing services in-house as well as a web-to-print facility, also runs a Heidelberg Speedmaster XL75.

"Having B2 is going to open up lots of opportunities and give us an edge," said managing director Jon Lancaster. "The Indigo is the fastest at 4,600sph in enhanced productivity mode, the sheet size is good, the duplexing ability is good, the print quality is high and it also does special colours such as white."

The £3m turnover, 25-staff company needs to build an extension to house the new digital press, which will be installed in September or October.

"We want it in for the run-up to Christmas, and we can perhaps help other printers with trade work too," Lancaster added.

The firm's unusual move into creating its own mirrored substrate, achieved by laminating a special film onto plain board, came as a result of a customer request. It took three months to develop.

"A customer had a call for it, and we went and bought some of the mirror stock that's commercially available, but the cost of it meant we could only really do the sample quantities on our digital press," Lancaster explained.

"By making our own mirror board we can be competitive on longer runs using digital and we can compete with UV litho. We've already produced 130,000 DVD sleeves, all with white ink, and I'm happy there are no scratching or static problems with it."

Lancaster is now planning to offer the board, which is available in silver or gold foil finish, to other printers via the company's e-commerce site at www.printedeasy.com. He also intends to put it through HP's accreditation process.

"I could make 40,000-50,000 SRA3 sheets a day, if I needed to, and I've created a ‘how to' guide with all the information people need to print on it successfully," he added.

"We realised the market lacked a number of basic finishing services for printing and identified this as a growth area," said Finishing SAC general manager Jose Trillo. "We needed equipment to increase production and contacted Autobond."

Autobond managing director John Gilmore said: "We are keen to make further progress in the fast-emerging South America market. Finishing SAC is showing just how profitable added-value work can be."

The sale is Autobond's second in Peru and the manufacturer is also in talks with a Brazilian company.

"When you see sheets running at 15,000 an hour - that's what sells the machine, you don't even need a voiceover," he said of his company's videos, which are posted on the Autobond website. "Some companies buy without a demo."

"Around 35 years ago, I'd hitch a trailer to my car, jump in the driving seat and shoot off to Dover or Aberdeen to do a demonstration and not get home until midnight. After a few years, I heard about video and had a film made."

Today Gilmore equips his installation engineers with high-definition cameras to record kit in operation, leading to sales in Moscow (a 105 TPHS) and Lagos (a 74 TPHS) each worth around £150,000.

Autobond also sold a £35,000 Micro 52 TP in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, and a £25,000 Mini 52 T to a company in Lisburn, Northern Ireland.

Gilmore said: "It doesn't matter if you run a shoe shop or a restaurant; if you make lovely things, customers will beat a path to your door."

The £4.5m-turnover commercial print firm is expanding the digital side of the business, which also produces wide-format work, by upgrading its digital finishing kit and building web-to-print capability into its website.

"We bought a Xerox iGen5, which takes a larger sheet and is faster than our previous machine, so the new finishing kit is intended to handle the increased throughput of digital work," said managing director Peter Scott.

"We have a big litho set-up, but we're doing more and more digital work and what we've found is that litho and digital don't really mix; you have to run the two operations almost as two different companies."

The Polar 78 will replace a Perfecta 115 and will be used to help finish the company's range of commercial print products, including brochures, leaflets, catalogues, mailers, stationery and posters.

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Hills explained to PrintWeek that he had decided to sign up for the show again very recently, after some digital print engine suppliers signed up in the last couple of weeks.

"We've been in a very depressed market over the last year," he said. "But we've got some interesting machines for customers that make print look better."

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Both are already available and there will be deals available at the show, the details of which have not been finalised yet.

A statement from the companies about the display said: "With advanced computer-controlled blade rotation and up to 600 grams of cutting force, the S Class 2 T Series cuts better and deeper than any other cutter in their class. Thanks to its genuine tangential cutting head it has the cutting precision of a flatbed while having the ease and high-speed of a roll-fed cutter.

"The new Pneumatic Oscillating Tool for the F Series is designed to offer the power for cutting through dense, tough or thicker material."

The Arden Impact software range, which can be used for 3D packaging and POS design and production, will also be on display. It incorporates a comprehensive range of interactive drawing tools, an extensive library of reusable display standards and the packaging industry's most powerful virtual 3D sampling features.

The products will be on display at Sign & Digital UK from 30 April to 2 May at the NEC Birmingham.

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"We have a great training plan in place across the whole business, including Modern Apprentice and Continuous Improvement Programmes.

"We have always taken a pride in what we produce and quality is imperative, this continues as we work closely with our customers to help them in a very challenging market," he said.

TJ International was a finalist in the PrintWeek Awards 2012 Book Printer of the Year Category.

Renz managing director Iain Bullock signed the exclusive UK selling rights to the 5000 and 1000 models after negotiations following the manufacturer first approaching Renz at Frankfurt's Paperworld event in February 2013.

"These two machines sit exactly in line with the existing entry level bench top binders that we offer and they have relatively high margins, allowing us to offer reasonable discounts to our reseller network," Bullock said.

He said that the two machines would be distributed through the company's various UK reseller channels, in line with strategies in place to only deliver direct sales for products over £20,000.

Bullock declined to name any potential resellers for the Bindomatic 5000 and 1000, but said that negotiations were taking place, with the retail price being set at £895 and £345 respectively.

He added that the Bindomatic 5000 would suit document finishers and copy shops, while the 1000 was a "true office" machine. The 5000 can bind up to 15 document per cycle of any paper format with a spine length up to 370mm.

The Bindomatic range also features the 101, a larger more automated binder, which is currently distributed in the UK through Morgana. Renz will now liaise with Morgana to sell this third machine when necessary.

Renz will also be showing the new 56 NET guillotine from Mohr, for which it became a supplier following talks at Drupa, and the MOBI 360 wire binder, which was launched at Northprint two years' ago.

The wide-format cutter can be moderated to switch between seven different operational tools, including cutting, creasing and drawing as well as a 3D milling unit and conveyor system, to cope with the varying demands of the signage, packaging and display industries.

A new front-end PC provides operational diagnosis information and enables the user to switch between manual and automatic modes.

Aside from being a traditional industrial machine, Lasercomb's ProDigi NEO is suited to office use due to its ability to operate without using compressed air, keeping it reasonably quiet while operating at up to 100m/min.

The UK-exclusive Lasercomb distribution deal, signed in March 2012, is one of a number of new partnerships for post-press supplier Friedheim.

The Hemel Hempstead-headquartered company also signed with Kama in January 2012 and kicked off 2013 with a new deal with Kohmann. A range of machines from the manufacturers, which form Friedheim's converting division, will also be on show at Sign & Digital UK.