The firm plans to sell the Chieftain, which will be available in the first quarter of 2006, as part of a 200,000 package with an XY cutting table called the Broadsword.

"We want to offer a system where you put a sheet in at one end and get a fantastic pop-up at the other," said managing director David Burton.

He added that the new machine, which uses a greyscale print head Agfa co-developed with Xaar, was the "watershed" that the industry had been waiting for with its combination of the quality of desktop printers and the productivity of industrial machines.

Story by Barney Cox