The deal for the circa 80-staff, Bradford firm completed on 2 March.
The family-run luxury and technical label business is €240m (£205.5m) turnover, 1,500 staff Printeos’s first UK operation. It currently operates 21 manufacturing sites across the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Portugal, and Spain – 14 of which specialise in labels.
“We could not have chosen a better way to enter the UK label market because of the high quality of The Label Makers team, its equipment and its client portfolio,” said Printeos CEO Ignacio Reirís.
Award-winning TLM runs a mixture of digital, conventional and embellishment label presses and processes and specialises in high-end labels for the UK drinks and cosmetics sectors among others.
It was founded by John Webster in the early 1960s, and has been headed by his son David since 1989.
However, with no clear family succession, David Webster began looking at exit strategies around 18 months ago, pausing the process at the start of pandemic and restarting with Leeds-based advisors BHP last September.
“We’d come off the back of two exceptionally good years and were on the way up, and that’s really the time to get out when you’re doing well,” he said.
According to its most recent accounts, to 31 October 2020, the business generated a pre-tax profit of £1.37m on sales of £10.4m.
As part of the sale process BHP identified seven interested parties across the world, this was narrowed down to three and Webster said that of those Printeos was the best fit.
“The reason I liked them was that they weren’t venture capitalists that would just want to build it up and sell it in five years.
“They had the same sort of moral compass as us, the same kind of family ethics. They were a privately-owned family group and they run each company autonomously, so it will continue as an English subsidiary with the same branding and the only thing that has changed is the shareholder.”
Webster said that as he had run the business with his fellow directors, commercial director Zenna Parfaniuk and sales director Kevin Lyons, one of the other positives of the sale was the new owner’s belief in the established TLM management team, which he had been working closely with over the past 18 months “to pass various bits on”.
He also cited the fact that Printeos had indicated it would “spend quite a lot of money” investing in the business in the coming years as another reason the deal was “win-win”.
Webster said he would continue to support the business as strategic consultant as required as a “bit of a backstop” although he quipped his primary focus now was “enjoying myself”.
As a result of the sale, Parfaniuk has stepped up as the business’s new managing director.
“We are excited by the opportunities of being a member of the Printeos family which will allow us to continue to grow as TLM and to support and provide benefits to our customers in the years ahead,” she said.
New MD Zenna Parfaniuk
