The new operation, headed up by director Darren Laidlaw, was 'soft launched' at Mercury Search and Selection's base in Chester in November. However, this week the Mercury Resourcing operation moved to its new permanent premises in Cheapside in the City of London.

"For a while, through and even before the recession, we've been approached by clients looking to source temporary staff and it's never really fitted with our strategy; primarily because we didn't have a base in the south and you really need to be on people's doorsteps pressing the flesh in the temp market," said Mercury managing director Dani Novick.

"However, we realised that no-one was offering specialist, print and design temporary staff and the feedback was that there was a real need as clients said the service they were getting from 'generalist' temp agencies was far from satisfactory – this is where we can bring our specialist industry knowledge to bear."

Mercury Resourcing will primarily focus on skilled shop-floor production staff, 2D and 3D designers, packaging technologists, account executives and project managers. According to Novick, the new company already has a database of several thousand temporary staff.