The 1012 will replace some screen capacity and run alongside a battery of analogue and digital wide-format kit already at Speedscreen, including a Durst Rho 800 flatbed and Rho 320 roll-to-roll.

Tim Hill, Speedscreen managing director, said that he had been looking at investing in additional high-speed flatbed kit for a while and had thoroughly researched the market, including tests on some of the rival machines launched at Fespa.

"I was never quite convinced by the others, but when I saw the Durst hidden away at an open house event in April I was just blown away. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, the litho-like quality at the speed it was running, but I got my stopwatch out and more or less made my mind up there and then," said Hill.

"The comparibly compact footprint, thanks to the belt system concept, was another massive bonus."

The machine on the Austrian manufacturer’s stand at Fespa will be delivered direct to Speedscreen’s Maidstone, Kent site.

The 2012 features Durst’s next generation Quadro Array printheads. The Quadro Array 12M printheads on the Rho 1012 have a drop size of 12 picolitres, offering 1,000dpi at speeds of up to 490sqm/hr.

"It will be more than 10 times faster than our 800. We’ve just completed a job that took 60 hours, but on the 1012 it would have taken five hours, it will transform what we can do. It will certainly win back the work we’ve been losing on turnaround times," said Hill

The 1012 is equipped with eight ink channels. Standard configuration is four-colour, CMYK, while the remaining four channels can be configured with various combinations of light cyan, light magenta, white and Durst's Process Colour Addition (PCA) inks of either orange and green, or orange and violet.

Speedscreen’s 2.5m-wide machine will be configured CMYK, Lc, Lm and with three-quarter automation.

According to Hill, his close working relationship with Durst will mean that his machine will also benefit from a number of developments over the next few months.

"We’re not a beta site, in the sense that it’s a fully tested machine and we have purchased it, but there will be other things down the road that Durst will introduce, but I can’t say too much," he added.