Specialist Keighley printer OPM Group is bucking the downward trend in the industry by investing £1 million in a state-of-the-art new press.

The firm has invested in the new label and packaging press which it said would significantly expand capacity and meet increasing demand as well as boosting quality.

The new Nilpeter machine, part of a £1.7 million investment over the past five years, is capable of producing 400 miles of labels per month.

The company, formed in 1972, employs 60 people at its four sites at Crossroads and Pitt Street in Keighley, Thornton Road in Bradford and Bromsgrove in the West Midlands. "In the past few years these presses have helped us to win almost 40 awards for technical excellence," said OPM's managing director Chris Ellison.

"The industry is in a very poor way. It's patchy. There are success stories but margins are under increasing pressure year by year. Raw materials prices have gone up. Paper prices have gone up twice in the last 12 months. Our industry isn't bullet proof. As a specialist company you have to look beyond short-term profitability and try to see what is coming in the future. If we'd relied on self-adhesive labels in the past we'd be experiencing very difficult times now. You have to look at new markets or create your own markets."

Mr Ellison was recently co-opted on to the board of Vision in Print, a government-backed industry forum to promote best practice in the British printing industry to equal that of its European competitors. The Yorkshire region is an important centre for printing with 1,370 companies turning over £1.3 billion and employing 17,800 employees.

Around 1,700 people work at Bradford's 140 print firms. But there has been a sharp decline in the industry in the city.

A number of companies have disappeared. In 2003, Polestar Watmoughs shut down its plant in Idle, transferring jobs elsewhere. Last year, Shipley printers W E Berry shut down its plant.

Other large companies have weathered the crises. Field Packaging which has a carton factory and a tube plant on two sites in Lidget Green, continues to employ 1,000 people.