The South Wales Argus will move to overnight printing on weekdays as Newsquest shuts down its Newport printing plant and moving printing of its Wales and Gloucestershire titles to other sites.
Twenty-one printers will be made redundant as a result of the decision to shut down the Newport plant, which the company announced last night.
Gavin Steacy, regional managing director of Newsquest Wales and Gloucestershire, said the regional newspaper group’s decision was taken after a review triggered by the ‘forecasted economic climate in the UK”.
He said: ‘As a result of this review it is proposed to close the Newport press facility and migrate Wales and Gloucestershire titles to other Newsquest print sites that can offer more colour and produce our titles more efficiently without the need for pre-printing and inserting, thereby reducing costs significantly for the Group.
‘This proposal would mean that roles of the 21 staff currently working in the Newport press, engineering and computer to plate areas would become redundant.”
The company will now enter a consultation period of a minimum of 30 days to consider alternatives to redundancies or other positions the affected staff could take up within the company.
As a direct result of the move, the South Wales Argus will now be printed overnight, as it currently is on Saturdays.
Many evening newspapers have switched to overnight printing in the last 12 months, with varying results, though the company said its own titles that have made the change have ‘generally outperformed the market in terms of sales trends”.
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