Oliver Cock joined the group in June. He has a long track record in senior leadership roles, most recently at Compass Group, where he set up the group’s Foodbuy business and managed a client spend of more than £1bn.

Prior to that he spent more than a decade at Diageo where he led the European supply and global innovations teams.

As managing director of the Brand Deployment division Cock reports to Communisis chief executive Andy Blundell and joins the group’s executive board. 

“He’s a very good guy, and we deliberately went for someone not from the industry. Rather, he comes from related client-side businesses,” Blundell told PrintWeek.

“He’s a very rounded individual with a big focus on supply chain and sourcing. Personally, I’m very pleased to have him alongside me in that role.”

Cock has taken over the role from Jon Wellings, who is now working at France-headquartered retail marketing services group Altavia. 

The Brand Deployment business provides a range of services including brand strategy, print management, sourcing, in-store execution and campaign management. It works for 50 clients across 20 countries. In 2017 the division had sales of nearly £200m, with group turnover at £367m.

Clients include Procter & Gamble, Bacardi, Johnson & Johnson, EA Games, Carlsberg and Nokia.

Blundell also said that new parent group OSG gave the business access to new technologies and international markets “that will enable Oli and his team to grow, develop and better serve our clients worldwide”.

Communisis was de-listed from the stock exchange after it was acquired by OSG at the end of last year, and is therefore no longer required to publish its results to a PLC timetable.