David Jeffries, the original managing director of Newcastle creative business Mere Mortals, has returned from New Zealand to turn around its fortunes following a restructure.

Jeffries has returned to take on the role again from Steve Walmsley, who has now departed, with the decision made to restructure the business to focus on its moving image work following ‘a significant deterioration' of the group’s trading position over the last year.

Jeffries left the running of the Newcastle business in 2007 when he acquired another business in New Zealand as part of the group.

It is understood that the company’s decision to heavily invest in it' gaming division has backfired, with most of its gaming staff now having left the company, many joining Gateshead games developer Eutechnyx.

One of those who has moved to Eutechnyx is Graeme Love, co-founder of Mere Mortals with Jeffries in 1999, who has taken up a senior position.

Mere Mortals will now concentrate on the ‘moving Image arena’, with Jeffries looking to recruit for new key positions.

Jeffries denied rumours that the company had entered administration, although he admitted that at one stage that was an option open to him, but one he had not chosen to take.

“Moving forward we intend to focus on our core strengths,” he told The Drum.

“I have been involved in moving media since university some 20 years ago, firstly working in Leeds for what was then BOW TV then at Granada Manchester before moving to the North East. Mere Mortals has specialism in this area and I think our track record speaks for itself.”

At the moment Jeffries is the only board director at the agency, but has said that this may change moving forward, while its service offering will include animation, editing and Audio Smoke, FCP, Avid, Pyramix, Maya and post production services.

Asked about the company’s foray into the video games sector, Jeffries said it was not a marketplace he enjoyed entering.

“I’m very happy to be out of it, we certainly have no intention at this point of getting involved in console games again.

"Games development is a difficult business to make money at, we were successful at it for 11 years because we had the unique ability to use our animation team on TV and games production and therefore reduce overheads but also because we used to deliver.

"Games development companies have a tendency to miss deadlines, not make it through to completion due to cashflow issues or simply not make it because the publisher changes their mind about the game before its finished, we delivered every time and got a good name for that reason.

“I met some great people in the Games business and we had some good relationships with Publishers but I won’t miss it,” he added.

Finally, Jeffries also revealed that Kathryn Taylor has set up a new company, Taylored Hosting, taking the web division of Mere Mortals with her.