An ambitious upgrade plan for two key regional plants puts the gloss on Fairfax Media’s newly-tabloid flagship Australian dailies.

Presses from the group’s Melbourne print site are being relocated and enhanced so that hybrid heatset/coldset editions of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald can be produced.

A double-width heatset extension underpins plans to print The Age in Ballarat, while a three-tower press is among kit being relocated to North Richmond, NSW.

The plans are part of a Fairfax of the Future plan announced last year, to shut existing metropolitan print sites in Melbourne and Sydney by June next year, and print the dailies at regional print sites. The project is expected to save $44 million a year, with at least another $80 million coming from land sales.

Some production has already been transferred to regional sites.

In Ballarat, a tower from the manroland Geoman double width pressline at the current Age Print Centre in Tullamarine will be relocated, upgraded and equipped with a new heatset package and ribbon folder, capable of handling variable web widths and products. The arrangement will also allow for a heatset web to feed into the existing Uniset single-width line – where an extra tower and folder is being added – enabling production of a 96-page hybrid heatset/coldset product.

Existing Müller Martini postpress equipment in Ballarat will be supplemented by the maker’s Alphaliner inserters, relocated from Chullora with new equipment in an expanded mailroom on the site of the present reelstore.

Some of this replicates the upgrade at North Richmond, where work is underway on a complementary upgrade to print and assemble the Sydney Morning Herald when the Chullora site closes. One of the Melbourne Geoman towers will feed into the existing Uniset line there, which already has heatset and UV capability.

Linking the double-width towers to the single-width lines at both sites – using turner-bars – is understood to be a world first for maker manroland Web Systems, whose local subsidiary is contracted for the work. This will expand capacity and allow the production of hybrid editions combining coldset and heatset pages at both sites.

North Richmond’s Ferag-equipped mailroom is also being substantially expanded with the addition of Ferag inserting systems from Tullamarine and new equipment.

A further manroland Geoman press from Tullamarine and other relocated mailroom equipment is to be installed at a new greenfield plant in Auckland, New Zealand. The older and less flexible manroland Colorman presses at the present Chullora site are expected to be sold or scrapped.

Fairfax's Australian print reorganisation plan allocates $42million for relocations and new capital equipment.

Details of the project were outlined at last weekend’s Single Width Users Group conference.