Printweek understands that Cox officially left the 15-staff, Cheltenham-headquartered business at the end of February, although he is still listed at Companies House as a director who “has significant influence or control”.

According to an industry source, Cox’s departure was “amicable” and had been under discussion for several months with his fellow directors: sales director Kelvin Bell, technical director James Hall and Martin Guntrip.

It was largely driven by his desire to take a step back from day-to-day operations to enable him to “expand his horizons” by taking on consultancy type projects both inside and outside the print industry.

While neither the company or Cox had responded to requests for comment at the time of writing, Printweek understands that he did not retain an equity stake in the business following his exit.

Seasoned W2P expert Cox joined Vpress in the summer of 2011 in a business development capacity before being promoted to managing director in March 2012.

Under his tenure the developer became one of the leading UK web-to-print developers and significantly raised its profile globally. He oversaw the recent UK partnership agreement with Ricoh and global tie-up with Kodak.

One industry peer described him as “one of the good guys, who is a fantastic bridge between the ether of online and the reality of print”.