Matthews took up his new role at the Italy-headquartered manufacturer at the beginning of the month.

It’s an expansion of Tecnau’s presence in the region. Harm Jan Hulleman had been covering the area as part of his remit, but has been promoted to sales director for EMEA.

Tecnau said the appointment was part of its strategy to strengthen its coverage in key markets.

“Chris is a key addition to support market growth in both sales and service. His experience will strengthen our relationships with partners and aid in the management and coordination of complex and large strategic projects,” the firm said.

Jan Hulleman said the business had experienced ongoing growth over the last five years, “with projects which became more complex and go beyond machine hardware, involve workflow and the Internet of Things”.

“There are a lot of talks about IoT but there are huge differences among what systems can do and how customers can take advantage of this information to improve their operations and the return on investments. It is our task to help customers take those advantages and we are convinced that Chris Matthews with his background and experience will help greatly in this process.”

Matthews has extensive experience in the digital printing arena, with roles at Punch Graphix, Kodak, Heidelberg and most recently Kyocera.

“Tecnau has a wide range of solutions with great product segmentation, performance and price positioning, which support many applications for both continuous feed and cut-sheet finishing, in business communications, commercial print and publishing,” stated Chris.

“I look forward to working with the printer partners and our local distributors to design the solutions to meet customers’ goals in terms of productivity, flexibility and investment level”.

Intelligent Finishing Systems (IFS) is Tecnau’s long-standing UK distributor for commercial print, books, trade finishing, labels and packaging, education and government.

Since May 2018 Bowe Systec UK has handled direct mail, transactional and security print markets in the UK and Ireland.

Tecnau’s product portfolio includes offerings for cut-sheet and continuous feed digital printing applications, including fully automated and integrated book-on-demand systems and a range of cut and stack products for non-stop production.

The family-owned firm acquired Lasermax Roll Systems a decade ago.

UK users of Tecnau equipment include CPI Group and DG3.