JOHNSON Tiles may be a mass-market leader – but it is aiming for a bigger slice of the world's niche markets, too.

As part of that bid it has installed a first-of-its-kind in the UK, digital flatbed printer to aid production of low volume products which, importantly, can precisely replicate colours and graphics produced on its main lines.

But unlike, for the moment, its mass production line machines the new one can print 3D graphics – a key demand of the hugely important United States market. And it can also make handling one-off designs a viable commercial proposition, cutting time and cost per tile in comparison with more traditional graphic transfer methods.

Among its one-off British job successes are murals for Bolton University's new leisure centre, and tiles featured in the British Ceramic Biennial exhibition staged at the former Spode factory in Stoke last year.

Innovation, and constantly striving for a better edge in everything it does, has led to Johnson Tiles being nominated in a clutch of categories in The Sentinel Business Awards – presented in association with North Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce and Stoke-on-Trent City Council. It is a contender for the BIC-backed Business Innovation Award, the Michelin Tyre-sponsored Environmental Business Award and the Ageas Insurance Solutions supported Training Excellence Award.

The firm's specially developed apprentice training scheme is intended to provide ceramics manufacturing skills training opportunities for local youngsters.

Training manager Bob Dudley said: "It was the first ceramic manufacturing Modern Apprenticeship to be introduced in the UK." On the environmental front Johnson Tiles has been investing for a decade in continuously reducing its impact by cutting utilities use and increasing its re-use of waste ceramics and water.

Across its Tunstall plant, that investment and a welter of initiatives saw the recycled content of its tiles increase to 27 per cent last year.

More than 43,000 cubic metres of process water is now re-cycled in a year, with more than 170,000 units of electricity saved per annum.

Part of the current savings on electricity is being made by a most unusual, if not unique, deal in which the lighting system for a major warehouse is being leased from the Carbon Trust.

The former sodium lighting, unsuitable for use with energy saving movement detectors and kept on 24/7, has been replaced with low energy fluorescent which only comes on when a fork lift truck enters an aisle.

That move alone has cut carbon emissions from the building by 93 tonnes a year.

A similar scheme covered installation of LED lighting in the company's meeting suite and main offices, and low energy fluorescent in another production area and warehouse.

Johnson Tiles has won a Sunday Times Best Green Company Award every year since 2008.