APN Print is to close the second of the four Manugraph-equipped Australian print sites it built six years ago.
Some 15 permanent staff and 25 casuals are understood to be affected by the closure of the Ballina, NSW, site, set for August 2, although some are expected to move to other APN sites.
Most of the papers printed at Ballina – including the Lismore daily Northern Starand Grafton Daily Examiner – will be produced in Yandina on the Sunshine Coast.
In 2011, APN axed four paid newspapers covering the area between Coffs Harbour and the Gold Coast, reaping a reported $25 million in savings the following year. All were printed at Ballina, and print runs for the remainder are understood to be declining following an increasing focus on digital publishing.
The rival Byron Echo reported that print staff were called to a meeting on June 19 and given eight weeks’ notice.
Ballina will be the third of six sites built or upgraded in a programme between 2006-2007. The Bundaberg print centre, equipped with a single-width Manugraph Cityline Express press and Müller Martini mailroom equipment, was the first of the new sites to open (October 2006) and the first to close. It is understood the press has been sold overseas.
APN Print’s Mackay plant – where an existing Goss Community was upgraded – has also been closed.
Ballina has a shaftless six-tower Cityline Express press.
Similar 35,000 cph Manugraph presses are also at Rockhampton and Toowoomba, while the Yandina ‘super site’ has a hybrid manroland Regioman/Uniset which prints coldset newspapers and heatset semicommercial supplements. A sheetfed plant at Warwick also prints covers and other work.
APN Print referred GXpress’s enquiries to an email address, from which we had not received a response at the time of publication.