Lancashire County Council has placed Europe's biggest order for Heidelberg Digimasters with Danka UK.


The deal, worth between 1.5m and 2m over seven years, includes seven Digimaster 9110s - four with CP Bourg inline booklet makers - and a Kodak IS70 copier. It replaced an earlier system, which was also supplied by Danka.


"We wanted a digital print solution that allowed us to maximise productivity across all five of our sites," said printing services manager Mike Wood.


The deal, sent for pre-tender via the EU Journal, is for between 23.8m and 40m pages per year.


Danka was one of six firms asked to tender for the job. The council declined to reveal the other firms.


Three machines have been installed at the Printing Service Section at County Hall in Preston. The other machines are at Lancaster, Chorley, Accrington and East Cliff Preston.


The deal included Danka's Lionheart print management system which allows jobs to be sent to any machine from any desktop in the council.