Kendal-based Pagefast was bought by MTP Media last November after it was unable to recover from flood damage sustained in 2015. Pagefast’s five-strong team relocated to MTP’s Lancaster base following the deal and all of its kit was sold on.

One of the machines that was moved on during the transition was a Horizon SPF-200L. MTP has now spent £60,000 on a new version of the device supplied by Intelligent Finishing Systems (IFS) which arrived in January to replace its 18-year-old Horizon MC8 SPF-10 line.

MTP co-director Alistair Sanderson said: “We already had a Horizon, so we are comfortable with the technology and, as well as having seen Pagefast’s, we’d already had recommended the SPF-200L to us.

“It means we can turn around our stitch work a lot quicker and it gives us greater capacity, which will have a knock-on benefit for our clients.

“We have never bought a machine from IFS before, although we have spoken to them a lot and taken spare parts from them. We always got on very well and this has been a positive experience for us.”

The automated Horizon SPF-200L can stitch and fold at speeds of 4,500bph and has the ability to feed A4 landscape sheets up to 640mm in length. It will be used by MTP to fulfil litho work from a Sakurai 575SDW B2 press and digital output from a Ricoh Pro C7100x.

With the Pagefast team now settled in, MTP Media now employs 15 members of staff on what is expected to be a circa-£1.2m turnover in the next full financial year. MTP is the dominant brand, though Pagefast’s website continues to run for the sake of existing clients.