The deal aims to combine Prestige’s European footprint and food packaging expertise and asset management software with YFYJupiter’s in-house photography studios and packaging design arms.
While YFYJupiter will be the majority shareholder in the new $30m turnover packaging artwork and pre-press group, both companies stressed that JPG would be an independent business.
The JPG board will comprise, from YFYJupiter: chief executive Mitch Crews; chief financial officer Michelle Tai; and managing directors for Asia and North America respectively, Sean Murphy and Nancy Schachtner.
The Prestige representatives on the JPG Board will be: business development director Ali Crisp, commercial director Paul Fraine, operations director Mark Ingman and managing director for Europe Mark White.
Murphy said: “This is a boutique service that we offer – it’s a very personalised service to our clients and we don’t [want to] represent ourselves as just a small part of a big company.
“The shareholders are still going to be involved with the business on a daily basis, interacting with the clients, so that’s why we wanted JPG to have a real strong independent.”
JPG will become the new parent company for YFYJupiter design and photography subsidiaries, ForBrands and Rimagine respectively, as well as Prestige Group’s Opal BPM software development arm and FAB design agency.
The new company will employ 346 staff – including Prestige Group’s 226 employees and 120 staff from YFYJupiter’s Creative Business Unit – the bulk of which will be based in London (163) and Asia (140 in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China).
The remainder will be based in the US (35 staff) and Australia (eight staff). Crisp said that the only overlap operationally was in Asia where JPG would have three studios that it would look to combine come Q4 of this year.
She added: “From a client perspective there’s no overlap, so what’s in it for the Prestige Group is [access to] the US market and we didn’t have an out-and-out photography studio before or YFYJupiter’s structural engineering expertise, so it’s bolstered our services portfolio.
“For YFYJupiter, we’ve got the food experience, we’ve got a European footprint, and we’ve also got our software division Opal BPM.”
Murphy said that the immediate goal, once JPG officially launches on 1 July, would be to take the group’s enlarged service offering to its combined customer base.
“What we’re actively doing is introducing the photography and the structural engineering services from YFYJupiter into the UK client-base and at the same time we will be visiting with our US customers and introducing the IT systems and the food packaging offering [from Prestige],” he added.
