The Bristol-based company replaced an Ideal guillotine with the D80, which was installed on 27 January and went live this week.

The investment supplements a move to a new 280sqm premises, which took place last April and quadrupled Handy's premises size. 

Business manager Michelle Jones said: “We moved to an industrial unit to be able to expand and have bigger equipment and more space and it means with the new guillotine that we can do more intricate work, so when cutting down tags we can cut down to smaller sizes.

“With the bigger back it is easier to feed jobs in whereas the other one didn’t have any backing so it perhaps was more difficult to use. The size of the machine really was a factor, and also it has good hydraulics.”

Director Martyn Kilford went to look at an existing D80 in operation at another printer before making the purchase.

“If anything is particularly small we have two plotters, which are really good but do take quite a long time to cut things individually, whereas with the guillotine it will obviously cut easier with the tag work, which we are trying to increase,” added Jones.

The D80 has an 800mm deep stainless steel table with air jet to aid product handling.

Its cutting width and feed depth are both 800mm and it has around 2,000 memory positions available for repeat-cut sequences. It is operated using a 470mm touchscreen display.

Six-staff Handy Labels mainly runs a Ricoh Pro C7100, installed in the new premises last April, for its label work. It also has two Roland XRs for vinyl work as well as laminating and foiling equipment.