Atex has announced three key appointments ahead of its involvement in the WAN-Ifra World Publishing Expo in Hamburg next month.

Returning from Brightcove, Jesper Persen (right) is named president of Atex North America, while Alex Podstata becomes sales director for Central Europe and Johan Gustafsson sales director for the Nordic Countries.

Based in Merrit Island, Florida, Persen will establish a direct Atex presence in the USA and Canada and support further development of the digital business in the area. Chief executive Anders Christiansen says the move is an important step toward in growing a business that already lists national newspaper and broadcast companies among its customers.

Podstata will be based in Frankfurt with the objective of strengthening the company's presence in its Central Europe region - Germany, Austria, and German speaking part of Switzerland - which it sees as the area driving the development of the whole European economy that Atex considers strategic for the growth of its business.

Gustafsson, based in Stockholm, will support business expansion in a region that has recently seen a rush of new, rules breaking, software companies. Atex has development centres in Stockholm, Sweden, and Oulu, Finland, the area in which its Polopoly digital platform was born and saw initial success.

Christiansen says the company has been investing in growing its digital platform offerings, introducing a new DAM and browser-based publishing tools: "Now it is time to bring these products to more markets and we decided to strengthen our sales team to achieve that".

• Johnston Press IT director Mike Fisher will talk on the Atex stand at WPE Hamburg on October 6. One of the biggest publishers in the UK - with 250 paid and free weeklies newspapers, 13 dailies and 198 local news websites - it is using the company's technology to centralise publishing on multiple titles and channels, manage communities content (UGC Hubs), follow and drive consumer interests in real time, and enable content gathering on any device.