The diecutter, bought from reseller Cava UK, will arrive at the Bury St Edmunds factory in January 2013.

Coatings Direct managing director Jon Olley said that, traditionally, the company projected a five day turnaround for runs over 100,000. But the competitive nature of the industry meant that customers began demanding shorter leads of two days for long run jobs.

Olley said: "Several printers based in East Anglia have already agreed to support us on this venture as currently they tend to shy away from this type of work as the lead times we currently offer are not competitive with printers in other parts of the UK."

Recently, the company produced Country Life’s advent calendar cover in one day, but its two diecutting cylinders, a Heidelberg and a Miller Johannesburg, were both run flat out for a 24-hour period in order to get the work done in time.

Olley said: "Doing that is not cost effective for us when you consider the overtime. We needed to get something faster."

The SBL B1 diecutter processes the same widths as the current machines, which will be kept to handle shorter run work, but runs "three times quicker", according to Olley. He said that the longer run work was coming from magazines wanting special covers and inserts.

Olley added: "We have been told that we can get work from the Midlands on this machine, so hopefully this will mean that we can branch out to new markets.

"Even in this very tough market the only way to remain profitable is to continue to invest; investing wisely is the key. Offering services that your competitors don’t have and finding niche markets have always been the difficulty in our trade."

Coatings Direct is owned by Olro Group, a venture set up by Olley and his late father in 1982. It has a sister company in Harleston, Norfolk, which specialises in decorative book cover and jacket finishing.

The Bury St Edmunds branch was crowned Post-press Company of the Year in PrintWeek's 2009 awards.