"We have customers in more than 140 countries but it is only in the last few months that we've won orders from Germany, India and now Japan," said Autobond managing director John Gilmore.

A German greetings card printer has installed a Compact 74 TP and the firm is also building Mini 52 TP for a book printer in India.

The Japanese order is for a laminator, based on the Compact 74 TP, which can lay down two 9in strips of film on the edges of one side of an SRA2 sheet and one in the middle of the reverse side, in one pass.

"It was very straightforward for our engineers to produce a Compact with the ability to have two separate rolls of film on one unwind shaft," said Gilmore.

On top of the export successes he added that the firm had had a "fantastic" Northprint: "A printer from Manchester wanted a machine really quickly, so he snapped up the Mini 52 TP H we were demonstrating on the stand."