Walstead appoints new digital managing director

Walstead Group has appointed former Born Group managing director Andy Berg as its new group managing director for digital.

Berg, currently on gardening leave, will start in the newly created role in January, reporting to Walstead chief executive Paul Utting.

He will be responsible for the division that provides content, pre-media, digital and creative services, which has been boosted of late with major pre-media and digital contract wins for its Rhapsody UK arm, the launch of a Rhapsody satellite operation in Spain and the 2016 acquisition of Leykam Let’s Print’s media services arm Amano Media.

In a joint statement, Berg said he had long been an admirer of Utting and Walstead chairman Mark Scanlon.

“Having seen the Walstead group going from strength to strength I am now delighted to be joining their team,” he said.

“The future prospects are extremely exciting and I am confident that in the medium term Walstead will be seen as one of the industry’s leading content delivery solution providers throughout Europe.” 

In the statement Utting added: “Andy is an industry heavyweight who has been at the forefront of the migration to digital and it is a great coup to have someone with his leadership and experience on our senior management team. 

“He is perfectly placed to drive the growth of our content and new media services as these become ever more important to our customers.”

Neither Utting or Berg were available for additional comment at the time of writing.

Kicking off his pre-press career in 1990 with Fresh Media Group, Berg rose to become group managing director and remained with the firm when it was sold to a private equity fund and rebranded as Born Group, from where he helped grow the business to sales of more than £15m and became managing director of its content division.

According to his LinkedIn profile he has been on gardening leave since July.

In a LinkedIn post at the time, Berg said: "After 28 amazing years it is with a very heavy heart, that I need to announce that today I will be stepping down as MD of Born/FMG. I'd like to thank all of my fantastic team and all of the great clients I have worked with, thanks for everything over the years."

Berg joins the 2,400-staff business at a time of expansion, in which Walstead has rolled out to Europe, picking up a former Polestar press for its Spanish operation earlier this week and targeting €500m (£450m) sales for this year. Its Rhapsody operation also recently appointed a new managing director, as operations director Tim Moscow stepped in to replace Les Pipe