Roberts has handed over his responsibilities for the UK and Ireland to Dave Spencer, formerly graphics sales manager. Spencer stepped up to become managing director, UK and Ireland, at the beginning of the year.

He said: "It feels quite strange that he’s going, because I’ve worked with Laurence for so many years. And even though it’s his last week he’s still out and about meeting customers and securing business.

"I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him and the contractual base of business he’s leaving us with is a fantastic legacy," Spencer added.

A European-wide revamp of the group’s senior management structure means Agfa also has a new vice-president of its European operations, Frederik Dehing, who returns to a European role after three years running Agfa’s business in Oceania. Spencer reports to Dehing.

During his time in the industry Roberts held a number of additional roles; he sat on the Picon council and was president of Ipex 2006. He said: "When I joined Agfa we were still at the end of the Copyproof and film era, something like 80% of our business was through dealers and we hardly did anything with newspapers.

"Now, it’s almost exactly the opposite. One-quarter of our business is through dealers while the other three-quarters is direct. And we have a substantial newspaper business. So that’s been a fundamental change."

Gerry Mulvaney, graphics and production systems division managing director at Danwood, paid tribute to his business ethos.

"Laurence is certainly a character. He has his own opinions and he voices them vociferously." Mulvaney said.

"He has 100% integrity and was always absolutely straight. He would never promise anything he couldn’t deliver, and we always knew exactly where we were, warts and all. He made running a business very straightforward."

Roberts said he would miss the cut-and-thrust of running a large business, but joked: "Come the end of February you won’t even remember when I left."

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CAREER HIGHLIGHT
In 2006, under Roberts’ leadership, Agfa secured a ground-breaking contract with News International. The 10-year, €110m (£95m) outsourcing deal involved Agfa handling pre-press production for the newspaper giant, taking digital page data and supplying imaged plates