Optichrome's 465H Mailmaster, which is priced at £45,000, has an enveloper with three insert stations, a hand-feed position and a fast-sheet feeder, plus a 2D barcode reader to handle data sensitive work.

Commercial director Robert Unwin said the purchase was a response to customer demand: "We decided to offer our own fulfilment service, which primarily we completed by hand, in-house, with the larger mailings having to be outsourced. As demand grew we soon realised the need to find an automated solution."

He added that 80% of the mailing work had been brought back in-house so far.

Optichrome has diversified over the past three years into variable data digital printing and data processing with a Xeikon and two Xerox Docucolor printers.

The company will use the Mailmaster mostly for the financial services industry on jobs such as multi-page personalised letters with booklets, but it also plans to bring in new fulfilment work from its commercial litho customers.