A Great Yarmouth printing company is setting itself apart from its competitors with a major investment in high performance machinery.

Blackwell Print in Charles Street, is one of only a handful of companies in East Anglia to house a Xerox 3100 Digital Press.

The state of the art equipment promises greater efficiency, reliability and image quality compared with other presses on the market and makes it ideal for shorter run digital work.

The machine was supported by the New Anglia Business Growth Programme.

The company, which provides digital, lithographic and wide format printing as well as creative design, is run by directors Keith Moore, Graham Gooda, Joanne Hodges and Aaron Hodges.

It employs 25 staff, including printers, designers and office staff working in sales and customer service. There is also an apprenticeship scheme in place to give local young people a chance to learn the trade.

Kaylen Nevin is the latest employee and is currently training as a digital pre-press operator.

Mrs Hodges said: “The Xerox digital press enables us to print to a longer sheet size than a conventional digital press. We now have the ability to print six-page A4 and A4 landscape work, which means we are able to target a different market to before.

“With the investment in our machinery it also signals an investment in our staff and our apprenticeship scheme is designed to give opportunities to young people in the area. Kaylen lives in Great Yarmouth and was the perfect candidate.”

The team also run Paperwave in-house, an online photo printing business designed by Mr Hodges, which has attracted more than 50,000 customers worldwide.

It also functions via an iPhone app alongside the website and orders can be placed using Instagram and Facebook images for items such as polaroid pictures, mugs, button badges and greeting cards.

So far Paperwave has appeared in the likes of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, GQ magazine and produced work for Zayn Malik, formerly of One Direction.

Visit www.blackwellprint.co.uk. To order from Paperwave visit www.paperwave.com and apply the SAVE20 promotional code at the checkout for a 20pc discount.