The deal completed in late December for an undisclosed fee, and ties in with newly appointed Hobs chief executive James Duckenfield's strategy of inorganic growth, which saw the group acquire the Face Creative Services brand last month after it fell into administration. Duckenfield is aiming to almost double Hobs’ £35m turnover by 2020.
Anexsys company director Jonathan Chan said that the main reason for the acquisition was geographical, as Anexsys wanted access to the centres of Leeds and Birmingham, both of which K2 has offices in. Anexsys runs a 24/7 legal print service in London and has two other offices in Manchester and Bristol.
It provides 'electronic discovery' and digital forensic services, along with printing and reprographic sevices, while K2’s main output is in legal printing.
Chan said: “This is the first acquisition Anexsys has done and is part of the ambition to continue to grow as the leading independent provider of e-discovery and legal reprographic services in the UK.
“There continues to be a growth in digitisation and the use of technology to support legal print and lawyers using and working with documents but despite the increase in the use of technology, paper clearly isn’t going away and lawyers will continue to want to print bundles of documents and copy them.
“K2 has good quality relationships with legal print managers as well as longstanding personal and professional relationships that we are looking forward to taking advantage of.”
K2 will be slowly integrated within the Anexsys brand in a period of transition that will end with it changing its name over.
Chan added that there had been some reduction in headcount at K2 in recent weeks prior to the acquisition but declined to reveal how many had lost their jobs.
Established in 2004 as one of Hobs’ four divisions, Anexsys serves clients in the UK, Europe and the Middle East.
410-staff Hobs also consists of its print, display graphics and content management business Hobs Repro, managed print and digital mailroom business Hobs On-Site and its 3D, 4D and visualisation section Hobs Studio.
