Publisher Trinity Mirror has agreed to deliver more copies of its newspapers to wholesalers earlier, as one of the ways to address the string of late deliveries affecting retailers.

John Howard, national newspaper sales director at Trinity Mirror, said: “I have worked here for a while and, as you might imagine, worked with many editors. Our current editor-in-chief, Lloyd Embley, is extremely commercially minded and often discusses with me RDT [retailer delivery time] performance, the causes of re-runs and occasionally the odd mis-pack. He totally ‘gets’ the newstrade.”

According to an analysis by the NFRN, 80% of all late deliveries would be on time if they arrived at the wholesaler 15 minutes earlier. Birmingham is one of the worst affected regions, with only a quarter of all national newspaper supplies arriving within 30 minutes of the cut-off point in the first three months of this year.

“Any one of us here is happy to engage in sensible dialogue with retailers, and if we can help, like in Birmingham, we will,” Mr Howard added. 

In addition to earlier deliveries to wholesalers, Trinity Mirror also pledged to deliver more copies in the first shipments.

Speaking to RN, the NFRN’s head of news operations Peter Williamson said: “The NFRN has taken the unprecedented steps of writing to all newspaper editors, requesting an earlier print time, as an earlier departure from the print site would mean earlier arrival into wholesalers, earlier delivery to retailers and, ultimately, earlier delivery to their readers.

“Thanks should go to Trinity Mirror for listening and making some changes to help. What we need now is for other publishers to take similar action.”