Champion, nephew of Neartone managing director Maurice Champion, resigned from his position in December to set up his own outfit supplying local printers with trade finishing services.

NBC Print Finishing was established on 14 September last year, according to Companies House records, and began trading on 3 January from the rented space formerly occupied by Neartone's finishing department.

NBC’s Champion said that Neartone was looking to shrink its operation and therefore agreed to sell all of its finishing equipment to the new company. This included a Moll Pocket folder/gluer, Muller Martini Minuteman saddle stitcher, an MBO folder, Stahlfolder 66, Polar 115X guillotine, Heidelberg SBG Cylinder, two shrink wrapping line, a six-station envelope enclosing machine and a 12-station Setmaster collating machine.

The total investment cost around £200,000, which Champion said was "quite overwhelming" but has spread the payments through a facility with Close Brothers.

Champion is targeting £150,000 turnover in NBC’s first year of trading and said he was encouraged by a steady increase in revenue, turning over £8,000 last month, double that generated in January.

He expects that this will grow to around £10,000 a month in the near future, once he has boosted his workforce from two (himself and his production manager, Ian Moore) to four.

Currently, the two men are working five days a week, and have had to turn away some jobs due to the lack of staffing.

He said that recruitment will happen "one at a time", and is searching for suitable finishing experts to join the team.

Despite the many links between NBC and Neartone, Champion is keen to promote the fact that the two companies are entirely separate.

"Primarily, Neartone was our biggest customer, but they have quickly become our second biggest client to another local company.

"As my key strengths have always been print finishing and I had always wanted to run my own business, I started NBC Print Finishing.

"My main points of focus would be quality and reliability of service, as working for a printing company and outsourcing finishing myself I had often been let down in these areas."

He thanked Moore, who previously worked as finishing manager for Derby’s Colourstream for 18 years, for helping to push sales "much higher than expected for a new company".