Business is booming for a South Lakeland printing firm which has a healthy order book, a growing workforce and a national accolade under its belt.

The contrast in fortunes could hardly be sharper between Milnthorpe-based Cypher Digital Print and its struggling neighbour, Frank Peters Colour Printers of Gatebeck.

For while Frank Peters' parent company is in talks with unions over proposals to cut the workforce by up t0 25 jobs, Cypher is recruiting ex-Frank Peters staff to help handle its increasing workload.

A policy of refusing to accept anything less than top quality work is part of the secret behind the success of Cypher Digital Print, according to digital print director Geoff Thould.

He and his eight-strong team have just seen that work ethic recognised in the annual PrintWeek Awards - the 'Oscars' of the print industry.

Cypher was one of seven companies nationwide to be shortlisted in the digital printer of the year category.

And while the firm had to settle for a runner-up prize, Mr Thould told Business Gazette the success still represented a notable achievement for a firm only formed three years ago.

Cypher took a party of ten staff to the awards ceremony at London's Grosvenor House Hotel and paid for an overnight stay in the capital as a reward for their efforts.

"We had a fantastic evening.

The top people from the industry attended and it was quite something for us to be there," said Mr Thould, a former technical director at Frank Peters who moved to a print firm in Leeds before returning to the area in 1999.

Part of Cypher's entry included a detailed explanation of the benefits of digital over conventional printing for the work it submitted to judges.

Mr Thould said one clear advantage was the flexibility of digital, which made it much easier to print variations of a company brochure, such as in different languages.

Cipher, which prints everything from brochures and leaflets to business cards, has taken on two ex-Frank Peters staff in the past year, and a third started work this week.

A further two new jobs are expected to be created over the next few months.

The company has just invested around £350,000 in a new Heidelberg Direct Image printer and associated equipment, which represents the very latest development in digital printing.

"It's a state-of-the-art, very fast running, very accurate printing press which cuts out the intermediate stages, and goes straight from computer to press," said Mr Thould.

With the new Heidelberg capable of printing 10,000 copies an hour, Cypher can now operate much larger printing runs.

While the firm has expanded significantly, Mr Thould and fellow director Paul Calland say they are wary of growing the business too fast, too soon, which has led to

the downfall of other firms in the past.

"We don't want to become too big.

You lose contact with your customers and staff.

We are approaching our optimum size," said Mr Thould.

Reflecting on the difficulties facing Frank Peters, he said: "The secret of running a successful business is having the right mix of business, so you are not tied to any particular market place.

"We have a good spread across the markets.

Frank Peters is tied into the financial market - banks and building societies - and that's a market that's fairly depressed at the moment."

Cypher's client list includes a fair number of overseas firms - "we have more customers in Amsterdam than we have in the centre of Kendal," quipped Mr Thould.