The German media giant’s Be Printers division has bought out the 25.1% stake in the business owned by publishing group Axel Springer.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, and it is subject to the approval of European anti-trust authorities.

Prinovis was formed a decade ago when Bertelsmann divisions Arvato and Gruner & Jahr amalgamated their gravure printing operations with those of Axel Springer, forming the largest gravure printer in Europe in the process.

In 2012 Bertelsmann spun off its gravure and international printing operations into a new division, Be Printers.

Be Printers chief executive Bertram Stausberg thanked Axel Springer for its involvement and said: “Together we have matched the challenges posed by the market and positioned the company well for the future.”

Axel Springer will remain a customer of the business.

Be Printers posted a 24.9% decline in sales to €362m (£268.5m) in the first six months of the year, although this period followed the sale of its Italian printing operation in September 2014, and included the disposal of its €137m-turnover Spanish print sites to Wyndeham Group owner Walstead in May. 

Operating EBITDA halved to €12m from €25m the prior year.

The division employs around 3,500 staff in Europe and the US. Its four European gravure sites include the £64m-turnover Prinovis facility in Liverpool and factories in Ahrensburg, Dresden and Nuremberg in Germany.

Prinovis UK managing director Richard Gray said: “It really is business as usual. The Liverpool plant was set up under the Arvato banner anyway, and people have always thought of us as a Bertelsmann company.”

At the beginning of the year the Dresden site became a hybrid gravure and web offset operation after it invested in two Manroland Lithoman 48pp web presses to allow it to respond to the decline in the gravure market by producing shorter runs, more quickly.