News of the major HP inkjet investment comes as the book printer reported a 9% drop in revenue to $58.9m, while pre-tax earnings fell 24% to $2.9m.

According to its financial report to the ASX, both revenue and profits were affected by “subdued market conditions”. Profits were further dragged down by an $8.5m impairment charge after the company wrote down goodwill on a 10-year-old acquisition.

However, the financial report revealed that “the company has also committed to invest in state-of-the-art digital inkjet printing equipment, which will be commissioned at the Maryborough plant during 2012”.

McPherson’s revealed to ProPrint that the machine is a black-and-white HP T400.

When it arrives, the web-fed inkjet press should be the fastest digital machine in the country. The T400’s rated speed of 5,236 A4 pages per minute (ppm) makes it 25% faster than the B&W HP T350 bought by rival book printer Griffin Press.

The T400 is faster than rival mono and colour inkjet machines, such as the Kodak Prosper, which runs at the equivalent of 3,600ppm, and the Océ Jetstream 2200, which runs at 2,200ppm

The book printer’s financial performance was weak when compared against the results of its sister company, McPherson’s Consumer Products, which saw revenues increase marginally to $290m and pre-tax earnings jump 7% to $48.4m.

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