The cutter has been purchased to help the company meet demand for smaller-format digital work and comes just a month after Heidelberg installed a new Stahlfolder TH 82 at the company’s site in Liverpool.

The £4.5m-turnover commercial print firm is expanding the digital side of the business, which also produces wide-format work, by upgrading its digital finishing kit and building web-to-print capability into its website.

"We bought a Xerox iGen5, which takes a larger sheet and is faster than our previous machine, so the new finishing kit is intended to handle the increased throughput of digital work," said managing director Peter Scott.

"We have a big litho set-up, but we’re doing more and more digital work and what we’ve found is that litho and digital don’t really mix; you have to run the two operations almost as two different companies."

The Polar 78 will replace a Perfecta 115 and will be used to help finish the company’s range of commercial print products, including brochures, leaflets, catalogues, mailers, stationery and posters.