Financial terms of the deal, which was signed yesterday evening (31 July), were not disclosed.

DG3 is headquartered in New Jersey, US, and has global sales of around £100m. In June 2016, it was acquired by US-based private equity firm Resilience Capital Partners, who funded the deal. 

Leycol managing director Gary Wilson, who will be staying on with the firm, said he had been in talks with DG3 UK managing director Barry Page for around 14 months prior to signing the contract.

Wilson said: “The business is changing; digital is a big part of the industry now and from Leycol’s point of view this is a great marriage. We’ve never had this offering before and with the combined forces now it will be great.”

Page added: “I’m very excited about the merger. Gary and I have known each other for many years and with Leycol’s client base and experience on the litho side plus the service offering we have with digital mailing and other services, it’s a really exciting future for both organisations.”

40-staff Leycol, which is based in Bromley-by-Bow and has sales of around £5m, will now go through an independent review period, in which there will be “staff consolidation”, according to Wilson. 

“People are going to be under risk from both companies. Unfortunately, that is going to come,” he said.

A source, who alerted PrintWeek to the merger last week, said: “Staff have been told the companies are going to be merging and they don’t know who has got jobs and who hasn’t.” 

Leycol will be relocating from its headquarters in the next three months and moving staff to two of DG3’s three UK sites, its main 100-staff headquarters in Dagenham, which runs its digital mailing operation, and a 50-staff litho site in Gillingham. DG3’s other UK site is a technical office in Birmingham.

Leycol's most recent accounts for the year to 31 August 2016, listed a compulsory purchase order on the Bromley-by-Bow premises, leading the directors to include a provision of £655,650 for costs to relocate the business. Wilson said this would have taken effect in around two years' time. 

At least one of Leycol's three litho presses, its 12-colour Speedmaster 102, will be transferred across to Gillingham, with no kit moving to Dagenham. In March, Leycol signed a three-year deal with Fujifilm to use its Superia LH-PJE plates. 

Aside from its UK and US operations, DG3 also has three sites across Asia.