Speaking in today's PrintWeek, Hibbert highlighted the positives in Polestar's results, which were negatively impacted by restructuring and impairment charges leading to a £179.6m pre-tax loss.

He said: "Obviously we're still going through the process of restructuring, but our underlying trading result was pretty reasonable.

"We've always had the advantage of quite a high contract base, but that doesn't mean that we're not being hit by pagination and run length falls – although we are benefiting from the weak pound, which has led to our direct exports increasing from around £2.5m to £15m, helping to mitigate the impact of run length falls to a certain extent."

Hibbert added that the group's main priority going into the next year was to pay down the significant amount of lease debt still on its balance sheet in order to get the company back on a solid footing and enable it to take advantage of its strong positive cashflow.

Hibbert's comments followed the recent publication of Polestar's accounts for the year ending 30 September 2008.