A THRIVING Kendal stationery company has set its sights on expansion.

Grosvenor House Papers, owned by husband and wife Keith and Janet Young, is seeking planning consent to extend the print hall at its warehouse on Westmorland Business Park.

The company has 55 full-time staff, having taken on 24 people in the past four years, according to documents lodged with South Lakeland District Council.

The larger print hall would enable at least seven more staff to be hired and would also allow large reels of paper from local paper maker James Cropper, of Burneside, to be used. It would house digital printing and copying machines, including equipment for cutting, stapling and binding.

Grosvenor House Papers is one of the UK's leading suppliers of bespoke school exercise books, for which the company has seen "high demand and significant interest", according to plans.

Trading since 1949, it also supplies stationery, paper and arts and crafts materials from its site at Gilthwaiterigg Lane, Kendal, across the country, and has its own transport fleet.