The company has expanded its logistics team and made new appointments to its packaging artworking and origination departments, adding more than 70 years’ experience to the Contact team.

The new appointments include Anton Butel and Julian Beckett, who both started in their newly created positions last month and take the company’s headcount – which has almost doubled in the last five years – up to 75.

Butel has joined the company’s High Quality Post Print artwork department. He is an experienced repro graphic design artist and is skilled in flexo, litho, screen, pre-press, typography and digital printing.

He has been in the industry for 31 years, starting as a trainee pre-mounter at Accur-a-cut (AC Graphics). He has also previously worked for Carlton Cards (UK Greetings), Chemence Graphics and JPG (Jupiter Prestige).

Beckett, meanwhile, has joined Contact’s Quality Control department. He began his career as a technical illustrator for a Dutch-owned publishing business before joining a design consultancy as an art worker where he worked on projects for Porsche, Lexus and Audi. Prior to joining Contact, he worked at V&W Graphics.

Contact Originators group chief executive Steve Mulcahy said: “It’s an absolute pleasure to be bringing new people into the team at such an exciting time.

“Julian and Anton bring years of expertise, skills and knowledge that will benefit the business and our customers. 2021 holds a great deal of promise for us and I’m looking forward to the months ahead.”

Contact’s fire destroyed one of the two buildings at its site in Bredbury, Stockport and the company lost 40% of its production capacity as a result, along with ancillary services.

But following a swift recovery, the business found a new 2,650sqm leased site in Dukinfield, Manchester, around five miles from its current leased facility, which it is currently in the process of moving into.

“2020 has been a challenging year for many and we’ve certainly had our share of bad luck with the fire and then, of course, Covid-19 creating difficulties for the industry,” said Mulcahy.

“With the support of our supply partners, alongside the resilience and tenacity of the Contact team in maintaining our quality, innovation and service focus, we have accomplished our budget and are now investing in bringing new talent into the business.”