As yesterday's blog inadvertently turned into a sort of extended rant, it seemed a good idea to conclude the week with something a bit cheerier.

Happily a more upbeat topic is at hand, thanks to the recent news about Polestar winning a contract for two Bauer weeklies that were previously printed on the continent.

This amounts to a significant chunk of print as the magazines in question, That's Life and Bella, have circulations of 387,000 and 243,000 respectively - so we're looking at more than 2.5m magazines a month being produced here in the UK instead of in Germany.

Great news for the team at Polestar Varnicoat, which has a News International-shaped hole to fill in its capacity planner. And it's a significant decision by Frank Ryan at Bauer, especially as the mags were previously printed at Bauer's own printing facilities.

This is hardly the sort of move that will have been made lightly, and I'm sure it has taken a lot of groundwork on Polestar's part to lay the foundations for it. No doubt the £/€ rate will have figured in the process too.

There is a view that print work that is being repatriated to the UK due to the favourable exchange rate won't necessarily automatically flow back to the continent when/if the rate shifts in the other direction, not least due to corporate sensitivity about carbon footprints and the issues associated with trucking tonnes of printed matter to the UK from far afield. Let's hope that proves to be the case.

In the meantime, congratulations to all involved at Polestar on this coup and to Frank Ryan for his decisiveness.