Derek Ashdown (left) and Ian MacPherson , with one of their printing machines

If ever there was a perfect example of the power for imports and exports on the Internet you will find it in an office called Ashdown Printing Machinery on the Rawcliffe Industrial estate.

It is a power that allows Derek Ashdown and a lone assistant literally to mastermind the hurling of more than 1,000 tonnes of machinery a year across the world and it is making him a rich man.

And it is a force likely to grow as he prepares now for the first time to take on two new staff and new computer equipment to cope with a growing deluge of demand.

Mr Ashdown, aged 49, supplies imports and exports of refurbished second hand printers via the Internet which he latched on to as a sales principle two years ago .

His website at www.ashdowns.demon.co.uk is where he plays marriage broker to those who want presses all over the planet and those who have got them. And in those two years it has been visited by more than 20,000 people.

That translates to around 20 e-mails a day calling for more details. And that synthesises into enough deals to amount to an annual turnover in the region of £3 million. More than a third of that - 35 per cent, he says - is profit.

Over the last three months alone he has sold £600,000 worth of printers and the irony of the geography of his purchases and sales makes him smile. It is fairly common for him to ship in a machine to Japan and ship it out again to its relatively near neighbour, South Korea.

Typical of recent sales was a press bought from Northern Ireland for £55,000 and supplied to a printer in Melbourne, Australia, for £79,000 or the sale of a £250,000 machine from Japan to a print firm in Chile.

Typical, because in the past the vast bulk of e-mailed inquiries have come from abroad. Only a tiny fraction have originated the UK. "I couldn't understand how countries like Nigeria and Russia who are thought to be economically backward had so easily taken to the Internet as a tool for trade," he says.

But something is happening out there. Many of the deals done over the past few weeks arise from interest expressed by his own countrymen.

Two months ago a firm in London offered him a £55,500 two colour Heidelberg for supply to Mexico. On Tuesday he loaded a 40 ft container with machinery sourced in the UK for a buyer in Pakistan.

And only last month he supplied printers PDQ of The Avenue, York with a £150,000 five colour Mitsubishi printer from Japan.

Mr Ashdown travelled with Darren Avery, PDQ's managing director to Osaka last May to inspect the machinery which was first brought to his attention on his website.

On their return he installed the new purchase, taking PDQ's old Komori printer in part-exchange. He sold that Japanese-made equipment to a company in South Korea.

"So, you see, it's not just a question of surfing the net or waiting for the money to roll in. If I'm a marriage broker than as an expert I inspect the bride! Last year alone I visited Japan three times, travelled all over Europe and went to Barbados. It's not too bad a life."

It's that know-how which sorts Mr Ashdown from any other Internet entrepreneur in his field. When he left the Masonic School in Hertfordshire he began as a trainee printer but soon showed more interest in the engineering of printers than print production.

He later joined Camco Machinery in Hertfordshire which manufactured finishing equipment but when he was made redundant in the 1970s recession he joined Smythe-Horne of North London which sold folding machines with which he had been familiar in the print trade.

Because of his printing and engineering experience he promoted Japanese Amada printing machines in the UK with which his firm had won an agency.

He was its service manager before leaving to join Ry-Offset, the Leeds-based importers of Japanese machinery and ultimately he broke away on his own, starting Grangeway Offset Service in Leeds to repair Japanese equipment. Five years later - in 1987 - he sold out to Hamson plc and in 1990 he started all over again at Rawcliffe. and last August Ian MacPherson, joined him as his as his sales manager.

"Now that things have really taken off there is no way out of it. I must take on more people otherwise I'll be swamped," he says, adding that his ambition is to break into the booming market in China.

"They invented printing so any sales to them would be the ultimate feather in my cap."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.