The Manchester-based four-staff business has bought a new Horizon BQ270 perfect binder from Graphic Arts Equipment (GAE) in order to handle increased demand following the contract win to print books for the government department.

Managing director Robert Stratton said: "We very rarely ever buy new, this is the first new machine that we have bought in a long time. It was a bit of a luxury buy, but I am glad we did it."

The single-clamp auto set perfect binder can run at 500 books per hour and is controlled by a touchscreen. It also features automated cover scoring and job memory storage.

Stratton added: "Over the past three or four years, the book side of the business has been building up. We have been running on an old binder and turning away work because we haven't had the confidence to run it on that machine.

"Since we bought the Horizon, we do book work for quite a lot of companies and in the last few months we have gone from around 2,500 to more than 5,000 books a month."