Colourflow and Anton Group are teaming up to fill in the gaps in each others product offerings.

And Colourflow, the high-street print chain with a central production plant in Bracknell, has expanded with the acquisition of the print business of Mirror Image (MI), which has sales of 1.2m and is based just outside its home town of Farnborough.

Colourflow sales director Mark Burdge said the strategic relationship with Brentwood-based Anton Group would allow his firm to offer large-format litho to its customers.

Anton Groups second 10-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster 102 is now up and running. The alliance will also give Anton access to Colourflows digital presses, including two Heidelberg DIs and two Indigo TurboStreams, one of which is being upgraded to an UltraStream. The firms will remain independent.

This takes us to another level of litho capability, said Burdge. And on the flipside they were looking for a partner to do digital work for their solutions department.

Colourflow has eight business centres in the South East, including Woking, Chertsey and Dorking.

We are buying MI partly for the turnover but mainly to provide an enhanced production hub for our business, said Burdge. MI uses a five-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster 72.

Colourflow bought the Elements West End digital site and N1-based Elements Large Format last December (PrintWeek, 5 January 2001).

The 9m-turnover group, which employs a total of 130 staff, was set up 18 months ago. Venture capitalist

ECI Ventures has backed the business to the tune of 2.5m.

Story by Gordon Carson