The Birmingham firm has appointed Richard Hooper to the newly created position of operations director. Hooper is a seasoned industry professional, having spent more than 30 years in print including senior operations roles at Opus Trust, Capita and MBA Group.

“This is a new, senior strategic role which will see Richard head up our entire, fulfilment, print and bureau functions,” said managing director Mitesh Chouhan.

Hooper will work alongside the CMS senior management team to develop a strategic short-, medium- and long-term plan “to ensure we maximise each and every opportunity that is presented to us”.

“In addition to having a number of years’ experience using paper wrapping technologies I will be assisting in the smooth installation off our new bespoke CMC line,” he said.

The new CMC One has just been signed off in Italy and will be installed at the firm’s Birmingham site next week. 

“I am extremely excited to join the team at CMS and I am relishing the opportunity of focusing my 32 years of industry experience and being integral in the shaping of the future of the business,” he added.

Chouhan said the firm, which employs 75 staff and is on target to turnover £12m this year, had ambitious growth plans for the future.

“I am delighted to have Richard Hooper join CMS and to take our business to £15m turnover and beyond. Richard will be working alongside our client services director to strategically grow CMS as we enter our next growth spurt. Richard brings great experience, knowledge and expertise to the CMS management team.”

Chouhan has also just placed an order for a CMC 250 high-speed envelope enclosing machine to help with the firm’s high volume envelope work.

“We have several 1m-plus jobs and need another high speed envelope enclosing machine to accompany our Kern 3500,” he explained.

The £250,000 highly specified device handles C6 to C4 and runs at 16,000 per hour. It has inline folding, rotary and stream feeders, a seven-item fill machine and five-way camera matching. It also has a Mailsort kicker and can produce 15mm packs, which is appealing for publishers of smaller-run magazines that aren’t large enough quantities for paper wrapping, Chouhan said.

The CMC 250 will be installed in February.

CMS has also invested £50,000 on a Kirk Rudy 545D tabbing machine from supplier AMS Mailing Systems, which will be installed in December. It can apply up to five perforated clear discs per mailer for Mailmark standard, and runs at up to 25,000 pieces per hour.

“The new machine will be mounted onto our existing Kirk Rudy inkjet machine enabling us to apply multiple tabs and personalise in-line at high speed,” Chouhan added.

All the new kit is in addition to the firm’s existing setup at its 4,300sqm site.