A few months short of 160 years after it was launched in the city, production of metro daily The Age has ceased in Melbourne.

Production switched over the weekend to Ballarat, 75 minutes into Victoria’s western district, where a print site built in 2003 for the local Courier has been more than doubled in size.

Closing the showpiece Age Print Centre beside the Tullamarine freeway – with its distinctive concrete-and-steel ‘rolled newspaper’ – is a key part of a “Fairfax of the future’ plan to cut production costs in line with falling circulations. The plans include shedding 1900 jobs across three years.

Recent years have seen sales of the newspaper fall by double-figure percentages to 131,000 weekdays and 196,000 on Saturdays. In preparation for the move to Ballarat, weekday editions of The Age went compact in March last year and the weekend edition at the beginning of last month.

Upgrades of the manroland pressline include adding towers from Tullamarine’s Geoman press to the existing Uniset ones – plus a new folder and dryer –enabling two 96-page tabloids to be produced simultaneously, and duplicating Müller Martini mailroom facilities. In terms of newsprint consumption, production quadruples from about 140 tonnes a week to 500-600 tonnes.

Also printed at the site are dailies the Australian Financial Review, Ballarat Courier, Bendigo Advertiser and Warrnambool Standard.

Fairfax Media’s board authorized a $42 million capital spend for the upgrades needed, primarily for the Age in Victoria and the Sydney Morning Herald in North Richmond, NSW, and print and distribution manager Matt Hancock says $18-20 million has been spent in Ballarat “so far”.

The Age was launched in 1854 by Walter Powell and Kiwi brothers John and Henry Cooke. After a rocky start, ownership switched in 1856 to Scotsman Ebenezer Syme, then to his brother David and his successors, before being progressively acquired by Fairfax between 1966-83.

During that time, it has always been printed in Melbourne, first in Collins Street and then Spencer Street in the heart of the city, and latterly at the Tullamarine site opened in 2003 and currently up for sale.

With production ceased at Tullamarine, the focus now turns to North Richmond, where the switch of the Sydney Morning Herald from Chullora in Sydney’s western suburbs to the former Rural Press headquarters, almost an hour west of the CBD ramps up in May. Production in Chullora is expected to cease the following month.

On our homepage: Matt Hancock with the ballarat-printed Age (Photo The Courier)