Managing director Dave Broadway said the acquisition of the £4.5 million turnover, 33 staff transactional mail specialist would bring CFH’s turnover to more than £30m. It is part of a strategy to acquire similar companies throughout the UK.

"We’re looking at buying regional transactional mailing businesses with turnovers of around £2-6m, in order to roll out our Downstream Access (DSA) mail service, Docmail," he said.

CFH piloted Docmail Local Post in Bristol in September last year and then launched in Bath a few months later.

"We’re now looking at moving in to Slough, Edinburgh and Glasgow and eventually we’d like to move up the M4 corridor from West London to Reading, Swindon and Cardiff," he added.

PFB will help to expand CFH’s Docmail Local Post service in Slough. CFH also recently bought FST in Livingston, Scotland and is looking for further opportunities to make similar acquisitions in the north of England.

Broadway said there was no reason to expect that services like Docmail Local Post would make the Royal Mail obsolete in more profitable areas while leaving it to deliver alone in more expensive rural areas.

"The Royal Mail receives more money for rural deliveries and if we ever got big enough to threaten their universal service OFCOM would step in. But we’re still much too small to worry them," he said.
 
Adam Harwood, operations director, said CFH and PFB had worked together for 20 years offering similar services in different areas.

"We both work with local authorities but CFH deals in revenues and benefits and PFB specialises in the electoral side. We want to build on those strengths," he added.

Harwood said the transitional process would take place over the next few months. Paul Foley, former managing director of PFB will oversee the integration of the company into CFH, where he will stay on in a sales capacity. t type="text/javascript"> Tweet