Sam Shannon, managing director of the family-owned Saltash print firm, said he was pleased to have been able to keep the pair in the trade, and hoped that he might be able to offer more ex-Pepper staff employment in future.

He told Printweek: “I suppose we weren’t even really looking to hire, but we just didn’t want to lose that experience from the industry. It’s a long road to retrain.

“Pepper did a really good job training [their staff] to a high standard, and they had a good team over there. The more of them we can take on the better.”

Deltor, which employs 35 and turns over around £4m, had been lucky in the energy crisis, according to Shannon.

Installing the UK’s first Komori Lithrone G840 long perfector in the summer of 2022, the firm managed to cut its power consumption by 35%. Combined with the firm’s rooftop solar array, it has been able to avoid the worst of the energy price crisis.

Shannon explained that the additions to his team – although not strictly needed now – would help the company be in a position to grow after costs settle down.

He said: “We always run the business pretty lean, but it’s more to make sure we have that skill set and capacity moving forward, as people look back towards the print trade as a means for advertising as the economy recovers.

“We’re hoping that the industry is going to be bottoming out in the next few months, and then we should hopefully see some sort of rebound.”

Until then, he said, the team would keep pushing forward: “I think, ultimately, we’ve just been trying to work as hard as we can.

“We’ve got a really young, vibrant sales team as well, that are doing their best to win new business, and we’ve been doing a little more trade work as well for some of the smaller printers.”