Prior to his role at Pindar Systems Street was managing director of Pindar's Scarborough site and his background in sales and management on both sides of the fence was highly attractive to Creo.

Creo EMEA vice president of sales Dave Wigfield said Street's skills were an ideal match for the position: "We've seen it in other parts of the world, the profile for that role is changing and people need experience of print and sales," said Wigfield. "He has a mix of print and enterprise software."

Street said: "I am looking forward to further developing sales across all sectors of the commercial printing industry."

His progress in the fiercely competitive pre-press sector will be closely scrutinised. One supplier quipped that moving from a "friendly family-owned firm" to Creo would be "like going from swimming with goldfish to piranhas".

Street will join the firm next week, over six months after Mark Nixon left. Creo had hoped to fill the role before Drupa.

"I didn't want to make any decisions quickly," said Wigfield. "It's a critical job for us in the UK and I didn't want to rush."

One of the first tasks to face Street will be a restructure of the UK business to handle the increased focus on plates.

"At Drupa we saw an acceleration of our plate business," said Wigfield. "We've seen a change on the profile of plate customers they've got a lot larger.

"The UK will be one of the first countries where we restructure to reflect consumables."

Story by Barney Cox