Callprint acquires Leeds printer

Callprint has acquired another print business as it continues to extend its regional network.

The London-headquartered £12.5m-turnover company bought Leeds-based Link 88 earlier this month for an undisclosed sum.

It follows the acquisition of Manchester-based PPS Print Communications in June.

Callprint said Link 88 has “vital links to the motorway and Leeds city centre” and would help with its plans to add to regional outlets in the Yorkshire region.

Callprint has also taken on all six members of the current Link 88 staff and said the business will continue to run uninterrupted and service clients until its conversion into a full Callprint operation. Callprint Group’s Birmingham region sales director Fabian Porter will manage the process with Manchester regional director Kayvon Dadfar.

The company said it intends to invest in more equipment at the 557sqm facility and employ more staff to expand the operation.

Incorporated in 1982, Link 88 currently offers digital and screen printing POS materials, posters, exhibition graphics, large-format displays, vehicle graphics and invitations and cards among others.

Porter said Callprint had wanted to buy a business in the region for some time to service a number of national accounts in the Yorkshire region.

”This provides a strategic facility for us in the North. We will be adding both small- and wide-format facilities to the current service offerings that Link 88 has been providing, which includes screen printing.

“The Jupiter Visual Communications service will also be offered from this facility, and all of this will enable us to offer a full-service solution to the regional clients, as well as supporting the other regional hubs as and when required with the additional screen printing offering.”

Callprint now has three wide-format print hubs: in London, Birmingham and Knowsley, Merseyside. Callprint Group managing director Steve Cheek told PrintWeek earlier this year that the Manchester acquisition was a key element of the company's strategic growth plans and "start of a process" which will grow its general and wide-format business in the North.

The company plans to grow its sales to £25m over the next two years through acquisitions and recruitment. Wide-format is a key part of its plans.

Also in June, it invested £350,000 in Xerox kit for its bureau in central London, Manchester and Birmingham and upgraded its RIP.

In September it invested in two new HP printers for its central-London wide-format hub to replace Canon machines which were then moved to Callprint sites in Manchester and Birmingham.

At the time Cheek also told PrintWeek that he was in talks regarding two possible acquisitions.