According to chief executive Steve Vaughan, the leap in profit for the year ending 31 December 2008 from £7.9m to £12.7m was largely attributable to successful cross-selling, supported by a focus on higher margin services and the firm moving "its centre of gravity higher up the value chain".

"We've seen the different parts of the business become a tight-knit story, and lots more customers are starting to buy multiple services from us, which makes the customers less likely to move away and offers [us] better margins, and also better solutions for the clients," said Vaughan.

As a result of the strategy, the group's pre-tax profit margin for 2008 almost doubled to 4.9% from 2.7% in 2007, even though sales overall dropped.

According to Vaughan, around £20m of the £32.9m drop in sales to £257.7m was as a result of the sale of Bath Business Forms last summer, with the loss of a further £6m-£8m "very low margin" work as a result of St Ives winning the Sainsbury's print management contract.

As well as in its IT and consultancy operations, the group's cheques and transactional businesses also performed strongly, with the latter benefiting from the purchase of fire-struck Mail Solutions £3m order book for £400,000.

However, Vaughan predicted that Communisis's direct mail division, which recorded the single largest drop in sales of all the divisions, just over 20%, would continue to struggle in 2009, with a similar drop in revenue expected for 2009.

"It had a very good year in the beginning [of 2008], but like everyone we suffered a tail off in volumes in Q4 and that is going to continue into this year. That said we made more money at Leeds in DM than we have done for many years," said Vaughan.

In January Communisis began a consultation over 90 redundancies, two thirds of which were at its Leeds DM arm.

The job cuts were announced a month after the firm revealed that it had secured a £20m debt package from Lloyds TSB.

This has been boosted to £40m as Vaughan revealed that it had secured a further £20m from Barclays, giving the company a three-year £40m debt facility, enabling it to attack its substantial pension deficit as well as put it in a position to move quickly for potential "short range" acquisition targets, such as "bankrupt or very cheap companies".

"However, we're not actively looking to acquire at the moment," said Vaughan, who also added that the funding would support a "radical" approach to the firm's £135m pension liability, with the goal of cutting the liability by 75% by the middle of 2010 to bring it below the market capitalisation of the company.

The results were welcomed by the city, with the firm's share price rising 4% on the news at the time of writing.

Click here to see the full results.