Conor Donnelly, executive chairman of the €160m-turnover (£135m) company, said: "The two sites are actually quite distinct businesses [and] we will absolutely look to keep both of them."

The acquisition, which saved around 160 jobs, adds BemroseBooth's Hull and Thornaby facilities to Paragon Group's five UK sites.

Donnelly said that the Hull ticketing and card manufacturing facility and Thornaby secure logistics site were a "perfect fit" for the pan-European print group.

"Hull sits in with an existing core business for us and we see this as a great opportunity for us to get a market-leading postion in the UK," he added.

"It will add to the RFID development that we've done over the past couple of years and we can now start to make that available in the UK market, so that's a natural development.

"Thornaby provides a secure logistics division, which we already do in different locations on the continent, although the acquisition of Thornaby and the calibre of people and customers we have there is a very strong addition for us."

While ticket printing is largely in decline in the UK, Donnelly argued that there was still a strong market for BemroseBooth's products and for the next-generation contactless technology that Paragon Group also manufactures.

"It's not necessarily seen as a growth area, but we started out in magnetic stripe ticketing many years ago and it still goes today. It's still the most popular, most economic means of ticketing for day-to-day travel," he said.

"Where you're finding the changeover [to contactless technology] – and we all thought it was going to be very quick but it's been much slower – is in monthly and annual ticketing, but we're able to offer either the traditional or indeed the new solutions, so that's one of the reasons why we were keen on acquiring BemroseBooth."

Another strong motivator for the acquisition was the fact that Paragon did not have a ticketing facility in the UK and the fluctuation in the euro exchange rate mean that it is not always economical to produce work for the UK from its French sites.

Donnelly said: "Sterling and the euro are strange bedfellows, and from a UK market point of view, our customers want assurity on pricing.

"So, if you're able to offer it because you've got a sterling facility, that gives us a strength and we have to capitalise on that."

He added that the acquisition would allow the two rival companies to share their knowledge – built up over years of serving the marketplace – and put that to work across their joint customer base.