The Croydon-headquartered business finalised deals to purchase Canon Platinum partners Condor Office Solutions and Systems Technology plus Konica Minolta Elite partner CSL Business Machines last month.

Chandler’s Ford, Southampton-based Condor supplies Canon production printers including the imagePress C10000VP and C850 and the Océ VarioPrint 140.

Also supplying a wide range of photocopiers and office printers, Condor has a large-format division that offers a fleet of printers, scanners, laminators and associated kit from manufacturers including Canon, Graphtec, Contex, Vivid, Kala and Utax.

CSL has offices across the Midlands and offers Konica Minolta production printers including the bizhub Press C8000 and the bizhub Pro C1060/C1070 plus wide-format printers from KIP and a wide range of office printers and photocopiers.

Rochester, Kent-based Systems Technology, meanwhile, specialises in office print, document management and technology services.

DMC Group, which predominantly serves the legal, insurance, finance and education sectors, has now made five acquisitions since it was itself acquired by private equity firm Horizon Capital in July 2018, and at which point its turnover was £20m.

The new acquisitions have boosted DMC’s turnover to £65m and expanded its headcount by 150 to nearly 400.

All of the staff in each of the three firms, including their respective management teams, have been kept on and will remain based at their existing leased offices.

DMC chief executive Simon Davey said the acquisitions “strongly complement” the existing group and are part of its strategy to consolidate the fragmented managed print services sector with high-quality acquisitions.

He told Printweek: “The industry is very mature and very sizeable and there are a number of resellers in the market so there is an obvious consolidation opportunity; the key thing is to pick the winners, which I think we have done.

“We have become the go-to consolidator in the sector - we are now a nationwide business with a very strong northern region, Midlands operation and southern operation. We’re well covered for our customers.”

He added: “All of these deals were progressing nicely and then the General Election was launched, and everyone decided to speed up, so all three deals were completed within five days just before Christmas. They all wanted to be done just before the election; the last one was completed the day before.

“I’ve known Condor and Systems Technology for three and a half years since I’ve been in the industry and they’ve been really good to me; the relationship is strong. Those conversations have been ongoing for six to 12 months, but they’ve always been on a list of prime targets for us on our journey.

“The CSL opportunity came to us via Horizon and we spent a long time developing our knowledge of that business. It’s been around for 50 years and has also proved to be a brilliant business, so we’re really proud of the three we’ve bought.”

The companies will all be brought together under one unified brand later this year, Davey added.

2019 also saw DMC strengthen its board with the recruitment of Paul Mitchell as chief operating officer, having joined from Experian, and Phil Jan as M&A director, having held multiple roles across acquisitive private equity backed businesses.