OneFlow is based in central London and employs 25 members of staff. It was spun off into a commercial product from Dagenham-based Precision Printing’s in-house workflow system in 2013. The business will be acquired by HP, subject to customary closing conditions, in a transaction announced at the end of last week and expected to conclude by the end of July.

OneFlow has worked in partnership with HP on various projects since 2015 when it entered an agreement for HP to exclusively license the technology for distribution. 

“This is something that has been in the pipeline for some time and we are delighted to have gotten to this point,” said OneFlow chief executive Chris Knighton. “Over the last few months, we agreed that an acquisition would be beneficial by bringing us together to co-develop and to accelerate the technology.

“Our system is used in 25 countries to help the printing of everything from keyrings to massive book runs. HP gives us the instant international reach and further credibility.

“It absolutely starts with the customer and it is our intention to invest in the products and find more innovative ways to help PSPs automate as businesses move towards online ordering. We have the opportunity to thrive as part of a larger organisation and we are looking forward to building on established relationships.”

The two companies’ collaborative relationship was previously spearheaded by the development of the HP Piazza suite of cloud-based services for book publishing and distribution, which was first demonstrated at Drupa in 2016.

HP and OneFlow have also worked together to develop the HP PrintOS Site Flow app offering, which includes the API end-to-end ordering system.

Further development through the joint venture will see a focus on helping commercial printers to manage large quantities of short-run, personalised print applications from submission to shipment on a variety of HP print systems.

Precision Printing does not own OneFlow and is not involved in the acquisition.