Colleen Hankin, formerly head of Key Account Division at Office Depot UK, will take up the role of general manager, Shoreham and Southampton in March. Graham Chambers, who has held a number of senior sales and marketing roles at companies including Amazon and was most recently head of global sales at TAG Games, will become Glasgow general manager next month. Finally, Paperlinx veteran of 12 years, Paul Farrell, has been promoted from divisional director, resellers, to take the reins as general manager Manchester.

Speaking at the time the paper merchant announced its decision to switch back to a regional focus across its commercial print business, with eight new regional heads, Paperlinx chief executive Andrew Price said that the general managers "will be totally responsible for that branch and everything that goes on within it".

"The people who make the decisions on delivery, pricing, etc will be out in the branches where they will have a better understanding of the customers' needs,” he said in October.

All three new appointments, along with Paul Drake, Phil Trudgeon, Will Bourne and Mark Turnbull, general managers of Leeds and Boldon, Bristol, Midlands and London respectively, will report directly to Paperlinx UK commercial print managing director Andy Buxton.

Buxton said: “It’s an exciting time for Paperlinx. We’ve made lots of changes, evolving our infrastructure and how we deliver customer service, to create a business that’s future-proof and geared for growth.

“We are actively recruiting to fill the one remaining general manager position for Ipswich and branch director Malcolm Kenyon has agreed to support the business in this vital role on an interim basis for the next three to six months,” he said.

Earlier this month the merchanting group appointed an interim UK managing director, former Heidelberg Australia and New Zealand chief Andy Vels Jensen, and implemented a further restructure of European operations that included 65 UK job losses across its logistics operations.