News mulls new print plant for its Melbourne ‘jewel’

Sep 24, 2014 at 06:55 pm by Staff


A new printing plant could be an option for News Corp Australia in Melbourne.

The tabloid daily Herald-Sun – one of the biggest in Rupert Murdoch’s Australian stable – is currently being printed on some of the oldest machinery in the country, manroland Newsman (Colorman) presses installed more than 20 years ago.

And while the company has rejuvenated four similar presses in Brisbane this year with state-of-the art drive and control gear, “we’re not sure we want to do the same in Melbourne,” national operations general manager Marcus Hooke says.

Getting the product right in the Victorian capital – home of the ‘jewel’ in News portfolio of tabloid dailies – is central to the group’s plans to be able print newspapers for the next ten or 15 years.

Among current projects is a plan to install inkjet digital printing in Brisbane to print copies of the Herald-Sun which are currently airlifted daily from Melbourne. Installation of a Prosper 6000 inkjet web and high-speed Foldline finishing from preferred suppliers Kodak and manroland will deliver the ability to print local content and advertisements in papers sold in Queensland and northern New South Wales.

Speaking in Manila, the Philippines, on Monday, Hooke said that while Reliance drive parts sourced from the upgraded Brisbane press would keep the Melbourne presses operating for a little longer, “obsolete software and hardware” in both press and mailroom needed attention. Ferag mailroom equipment – including inserting drums which split the conveyor feed to keep pace with the presse – are of the same vintage.

In Brisbane, News retrofitted new ABB press drives and manroland’s latest iPad-based control systems as part of a standardisation on the maker’s PECOM system already used in Sydney and Townsville. Closed-loop QI Press Controls IDS colour control technology has also been commissioned in Brisbane following a successful installation on the newer Geoman presses in Sydney, bringing greater consistency and an eight-to-ten per cent reduction in colour ink consumption.

The upgrade and recommissioning of a fourth press has enabled News to close its Gold Coast print site, from which a nine-tower KBA Comet is being crated. Print sites in Cairns and Alice Springs have also been closed as part of a “match fit” production programme which involved national leadership training.

Hooke says a new press was not an option in Brisbane: “We didn’t even ask,” he says.

But the bigger and more competitive Melbourne market is different and although Hooke didn’t discuss options, there could be savings from building a new plant further out of town and redeveloping the current Westgate Park site. In the UK, News has replaced the Newsman presses installed at Wapping – as part of the same order as Melbourne and three other Australian sites – with triple-wide Colorman lines at a supersite in Broxbourne, north of London, as well as at Knowsley and Eurocentral.

Rival Fairfax Media has recently closed its city print site in Melbourne’s Tullamarine, printing daily flagship The Age at an upgraded regional site in Ballarat instead. Although the arrangement means earlier editorial deadlines, Fairfax expects to return the $42 million cost of upgrading the Victorian site and another enabling it to close its Chullora, Sydney, plant – within a year.

Latest WAN-Ifra figures show a relatively stable advertising market despite a 19.59 per cent fall in Australian newspaper circulations.

Sections: Newspaper production