Absolute Digital will continue trading independently with all staff kept on, and its two current directors retiring in 2023 and 2024. The sale, which was not a part of any insolvency process, has been several years in the making, according to Kerr.

He told Printweek: “We first started speaking during Covid.”

The conversation had been prompted, he added, when a local industry contact mentioned to Kerr that Absolute Digital’s directors had started looking at an exit strategy to retirement.

The sale will not mean any immediate changes for Absolute Digital, according to Kerr.

He said: “They do a good job. The staff are very capable of running the day-to-day business. [...]

“It’s very early days, as you can imagine, because we only just completed the acquisition in December. We are looking to just keep the turnover nice and steady for the time being, we’re not going to put in any massive targets.”

Kerr and Ackred’s Finger Prints has also bought the unencumbered assets and trading name of Blackpool-based Brightprint.

Brightprint closed its doors on 6 January following the year-and-a-half long illness of its founder and managing director Phil Titford. 

Titford, while now recovered, told Printweek that Covid had meant the end for the business, which he had founded in 2012.

Titford has employed insolvency specialist Leonard Curtis, which has contacted creditors to begin the process of appointing an administrator.

He said: “I couldn’t get into work. One of the lads was running [the business] as well as he could, he’s very competent, but, obviously, it was not his business, so he couldn’t delve into the books and what we needed to do.

“So when I eventually came back after Christmas, I decided it was time to stop.”

Titford added that all ten of his staff had found new print jobs, save for two who had decided to leave the print industry.

Brightprint’s unencumbered assets and trading name have been bought by Finger Prints, including several pieces of finishing equipment, which were installed at the company's Barrow-in-Furness site in mid February.