Former managing director Robin Welch has been appointed group chief executive, with responsibility for acquisitions as well as strategy across the three group companies: GI Solutions, GI Insight and the group's China-based operation SynYang.

Meanwhile, former deputy managing director Patrick Headley has been promoted to managing director of GI Solutions, the largest of the three group companies, while Alistair Ezzy, formerly group sales director, has taken on the role of operations director.

Ezzy replaces current operations director Ifor Pedley who is leaving the group to pursue his other business interests.

Headley said: "Ifor has a few other ventures and he approached us saying it was time he moved on. It was his strategy to move Alistair into that role as he's very passionate about quality but also R&D, which is an important part of what we do."

Commenting on his own promotion, Headley said: "I've held various roles within the business and it's nice that the board has placed its confidence in me to run GI Solutions, but the most crucial part of the restructure is freeing Robin up to focus on strategy across the three businesses as well as bolt-on acquisitions into the group.

"Our private equity backers are very happy with our progress with the acquisitions we've made recently, such as Cognesia last year which has bolted on to GI Insight, and they want us to continue growing.

"We're keen to make more bolt-on acquisitions where we have the ability to scale them up because it's the right thing for the business. Obviously it has to be the right price, the right deal and you have to have the right people engaged, but it would be nice to make another acquistion this calendar year."

Headley added that the Leicester-based group was especially interested in acquiring a transactional print business. "That's very much where we see our growth coming from - in digital transactional print, so smaller mailings happening more frequently," he said.