The deal will give the French-headquartered flexible packaging printer its first UK production site. Prior to the acquisition, its UK operation, which has 16 staff and sales of £13m, was restricted to design division Oui 3 and sales based at its Mid Lothian office.

“We’ve been building turnover in the UK since 2003. Now we’ve reached the point when it makes sense to do production for the UK market locally,” said UNI Packaging UK managing director Rod Entwistle.

“The two firms are a good match: Arteb has good production facilities and we have a good sales organisation.”

He added that a local factory would enable the business meet the increasing demand from its UK customers for faster turnaround times.

Arteb had sales of £3m-£4m and 20 staff at its 1,000sqm St Helens factory, which offers flexo printing up to 1.3m-wide and nine colours with in-house laminating, perforating and slitting.

UNI Packaging is planning to install a pouch-making line and add print capacity doubling staff and sales.

The site may get one of the two HP Indigo 20000 digital web presses that UNI Packaging has ordered, one of which is earmarked for its Digiflex division in Perigny, Charente-Maritime, western France.

Entwistle said the fit of the two organisations was very good. Both are family-owned, UNI by the Caresmel family and Arteb by the Parisi family, who have retained a stake in the firm and will continue running the operation.

UNI has six production facilities in France, producing gravure, flexo and digitally printed packaging. The group, which has sales operations in 15 countries, has sales of €104m (£83m) and 300 staff.

Entwistle said that future acquisitions could be on the cards, as UNI looks to increase its UK-based production capabilities.