It turned a 3.38m pre-tax loss for 2000 into a 2.27m profit for the year to 30 September 2001. Sales were up 2% to 74.9m.

Pindar said the group was focused on being the leading "overall service provider" to the catalogue sector. To back its commitment Pindar is spending 5m on a second 48pp MAN Roland Lithoman IV web.

Performance in the first half of this financial year, which ended this week, has been even stronger than in the same period last year.

Pindars high street print chain, Alphagraphics, now has 325 sites in 20 countries. In the next five years it hopes to grow the chains UK operations from just over 20 sites to 50.

In 2001 the group strengthened its relationship with Yellow Pages publisher Yell by starting advertising typesetting for Yellow Book, its US subsidiary.

Its results for 2000 were hit by the closure of Edinburgh-based Macdonald Lindsay Pindar and the RR-Donnelley-Pindar City print plant in Feltham.

Story by Gordon Carson