News UK and Daily Mail Group (DMG) are bringing their print sites into one joint operation according to reports by Print Week.
Following months of rumours about changes planned for the UK’s newspaper printing industry, News UK’s Newsprinters sites at Broxbourne, Knowsley and Eurocentral near Glasgow, and DMG’s sites in Thurrock and Dinnington have announced that they are consolidating their work.
The new joint venture is called NewCo, and aims to create a sustainable long-term solution for newspaper printing and associated logistics as print sales decline. It would mean the closure of the plants at Thurrock and Dinnington, and make more use of the capacity of Broxbourne, Knowsley and Eurocentral. These three sites would be printing almost 22 million newspapers per week.
The change would alter the distance newspapers must travel before arriving into wholesale depots and are likely to lead to greater ‘trunking’ of deliveries into wholesale depots.
DMG’s plant in Carn, Dinnington, and Thurrock sites are not believed to be included in the new joint venture.
Julia Palmer-Poucher, group production director for DMG, said that print circulation decline “has not been matched with changes to print capacity” and that the commercial viability of print newspapers needed to be protected.
NewCo would be led by a team gathered from existing DMG and News UK staff. The plan would affect not only DMG and News UK titles, but those from other publishers who contract printing or distribution to Newsprinters or DMG, including the Financial Times and the Guardian.
Newsprinters UK managing director Darren Barker described a joint venture as a “genuinely exciting solution which sets out a long-term sustainable future for the newspaper printing industry, clients and the national daily newspaper ecosystem in the UK.”
Palmer-Poucher added: “We are aware this will be an uncertain time for those potentially impacted and our priority is to provide staff with the support they need throughout this process.”
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