Ken Heyes, former chairman and managing director of News Limited’s Progress Press, died this morning after a short illness. He was 86.

His daughter, Lyn Gillam, told GXpress he had been ill for a short while, and had been in care for about six weeks. “He passed peacefully in his sleep,” she says.

An electrician who helped pioneer the early introduction of web-offset printing technology in Australia, Ken Heyes was a co-founder of Progress Press, helping build the business from a small progress association news-sheet into a giant of suburban newspaper publishing, printing and distribution. He was managing director of Progress Press Distributors, a company which by the early 1980s was delivering close to half a billion catalogues and publications a year.

He was also founding member of the ANZWONA web-offset association, the forerunner of PANPA.

Famously (and I believe the quotation comes from Ken Cowley) he moved one Goss Community press around Australia so many times it was said “all he needs to do is whistle and it’ll follow.”

As chairman of News Limited’s Progress Press he presided over a newspaper and catalogue printing and distribution business with many loyal clients including the AFL, K-Mart, RACV Woolworths, the Herald & Weekly Times and Fairfax. He continued on as a senior consultant to the company as it became PMP with a stable of magazines including New Idea and TV Week and – following News’ acquisition of the Herald & Weekly Times in 1987 – Argus & Australasian titles  including Australasian Post and Home Beautiful. Many of the titles survive within Pacific Magazines, spun off in 1991 and sold to Seven Media, while the printing and distribution business became PMP Print.

In recent years, he maintained a connection with the newspaper industry through the local Alexandra and Eildon Standard, which had been operated by members of his family. Ken Heyes, 86, leaves a his wife Norma, som Geoff, and daughters Jenny, Pam, Carolyn and Lynette, 12 grandchildren and four great-granchildren.

The funeral is on Monday at 11.45 at Boyd Chapel, Springvale Crematorium in Melbourne.

• GXpress hopes to publish a fuller obituary in due course and would welcome tributes and reminiscences.