Paperhat Group last week secured its second acquisition of 2015 when it completed a deal for Bulgarian digital production company Despark. The move follows the acquisition of Manchester-based CTI Digital earlier this month.

So what has sparked the high level of activity within the company in the past month? Group CEO Tim Peppiatt told Growth Business its part of a strategy that stretches back to 2009.

“In fact it may have started before that, but the last board of the company wasn’t as ambitious as the board we have now,” he said. “Obviously the whole production marketplace is changing. The type of companies we’re looking for aren’t for sale.”

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Peppiatt calls Paperhat “very particular” about the kind of businesses they buy – having looked at 80 companies to find the two they eventually acquired.

“We’re looking for some very special people,” he said. “The CTIs and Desparks of the world are the future. The digital marketplace, in terms of production, is growing faster than demand can keep up. So it’s a space we wanted to be in.”

Part of Paperhat’s strategy involves putting together teams by “drawing from industry experts – not going out to a headhunter and asking them to put together individuals for us”, according to Peppiatt.

He predicts that the company’s strategy will continue largely in the same vein for the rest of the year – but at “an accelerated pace”. The company has also opened offices in both New York and Hong Kong recently “in response to customer demand”.

“It’s not a Field of Dreams moment where we say ‘if we build it they will come’, we’ve already got customer relationships in those areas. No one company has the perfect international growth strategy but our approach is based on solid knowledge of the markets and clients,” he explained.