A new 18.3 metre high pressroom – big enough for a three or four-tower double-width press – a large mailroom and reelstore are central to Fairfax Media’s $9.5 million extension of its printing plant in North Richmond, NSW.

Plans and documents now submitted to the local Hawkesbury city council show a tall new presshall, 24.3 metres long, as well as a 1355 m2 publishing room and 1600 m2 reelstore. The old reelstore becomes a commercial bindery.

No details of the equipment to be installed have been provided, although drawings suggest a four-tower press with reel stands below… likely to be a double-width manroland line relocated from the group’s Tullamarine, Melbourne or Chullora, Sydney print sites.

If so it would certainly be capable of printing a tabloid newspaper section of up to 96 pages (collect) or 48pp straight. Fairfax has three six-reelstand shaftless Geoman (dubbed Ageman) presses in Tullamarine, installed in 2002 on a six-hectare site near Melbourne airport.

Ground floor accommodation in the North Richmond production building is more than doubled to 6,700 m2 by the new building sited on former car parking space to the east of the existing press and mailroom facilities.

A first-floor quiet room is separated by offices from an extended platemaking area and that for the existing presses. Also on the first floor are new lunch and meeting rooms.

The new publishing room is linked to a six-bay despatch dock, one of four in the complex. Other docks provide for reel delivery – earmarked for B-double and semitrailer access – courier and ink and consumables deliveries.

An traffic impact assessment submitted by architects Turner Hughes gives some impression of the increased activity which might result. While the number of rigid trucks visiting the site will only increase by four a week, the number of semitrailers will increase by two-thirds and the number of B-doubles double to six a week.

Fairfax plans to print the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ and editions of the ‘Australian Financial Review’ at regional plants including North Richmond from June 2014, together with other work currently produced at Chullora.

See also: Fairfax's $9.5 million upgrade plan