South London-based F1, which has its background in repro, photography and specialist print management, teamed with design, software development and web services business St8us Group in January.

The move was designed to capitalise on the strengths of both businesses and to increase F1's value-added service offering in response to the commoditisation of its historical markets.

According to F1 founder and managing director Ken Harrison, the combination of F1's cross-media production expertise with St8us' proprietary data analytics software and other web-based services, including DAM and web-to-print, has served to reinvent and reinvigorate the two businesses.

"The merger has been fantastic - F1 has leapt not just to the next stage of its evolution but its offering is now on a whole different level," he said. "Our new website has been launched introducing 'our space', which is the campaign term given to highlighting our new services and systems."

Following the merger, St8us Group founder Peter Gatward has been named a director and shareholder of F1 Colour, while the rest of the company's staff have all been transferred to F1.

Harrison said: "Having Peter and his team on board and the changes that we have implemented already, have given the company a real boost."

Gatward added: "We believe F1 Colour can now provide huge value to any company currently struggling to optimise their above and below the line marketing activities across an ever growing number of marketing channels. We've an exciting future."