After years of speculation, Richard Des- mond finally announced his future printing plans for Northern and Shell last week. Sort of.

While the other major newspaper manufacturers in the UK announced their press investments with massive fanfares, Desmond chose his own titles, The Daily Star and The Daily Express, to break the news.

As a result, many in the industry are dismissing the announcement as little more than propaganda, as no doubt the Express editors had little say in how the article was written. Equally, when pressed, the company is far from forthcoming with information, so, until Desmond sees fit to open up about the investment, it’s hardly surprising it was met with such a luke-warm response.

What Desmond has said is that he will be spending £100m, that the spend will start with four presses from KBA and the investment will be for Westferry Printers. What he didn’t say is how much of the £100m investment has gone on those presses and, more importantly, where they will be going. Sadly, KBA is bound by Desmond’s vow of silence, so news from their end is unlikely to be forthcoming any time soon either.

King of the castle
One of the options previously open to Northern and Shell was to follow its former Westferry stablemate Telegraph Media Group and contract the printing of its titles out. However, as one industry insider told PrintWeek, this poses one key problem.

Desmond wants to be the king of his own castle, the insider says. He wouldn’t want to be told ‘this is your print slot, don’t be late’. So it has always been assumed that he would invest in presses of his own eventually.

Despite that assertion, there are still some who believe he announced the investment plans to force the hand of a potential contractor, be that Newsprinters, Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press or another printer.

However, one organisation that is quite happy with the investment, providing it all goes through, is Unite, which would rather Desmond invested in his own presses and maintained jobs than contracted out. But even they are tentative about the news, although they have supported it.

National officer Steve Sibbald says: We wouldn’t want to see News International subsidiary Newsprinters taking all the UK’s newspapers. We would much prefer it to stay in the hands of the Express.

If Desmond does go ahead with installing his own presses, there is the possibility that he will also go down the contract printer route, providing competition, rather than contracts, for Newsprinters.

Sibbald does not see this happening, although he does believe that it will have an effect on the contract print market.

Death knell
He says: I think he is putting those presses in for his own titles, but there will have been other companies eyeing up his work.

It looks like the nationals will all be set now, but I don’t see many of the regional print sites surviving, with the Express work definitely out of the way the big guys still need to fill their presses.

Regional publishers just won’t be able to compete with what they put on the table.

If Desmond does stick to his guns and invest in presses, what will that mean for his plant in east London? One industry observer noted: It would be ridiculous for him to keep the site. With the value of real estate in that area he could make hundreds of millions of pounds.

Ian McDonald, who carried out the last major investment in UK press equipment when he spent £600m as News International’s managing director of operations, said that it can be easier to build a new site than alter an existing one.

He says: There are a lot of variables that we are not aware of, but it is likely that new presses will be more powerful than old ones, they may be taller. It is a lot more difficult than taking a press out and putting one in.

Moving house
One rumour is that Desmond has found a new location north of London. Moving out of the city would improve transport links, and the cost of buying a new site would be significantly less than the capital he likely to realise from the sale of Westferry.

It’s not clear what impact the move will have; there could be job losses, equally there could be additional competition in a cluttered sector. But one newspaper printer believes that the winners will be press manufacturers.

There won’t be any more investments like this in the UK, he says. But the rest of the world will be watching, the rest of Europe will be watching and it may just be a sign that it is the right time to spend money. This could be a great move for guys like KBA and Manroland.

The proposed investment leaves more questions than answers and at this stage Northern and Shell are far from forthcoming with information, so it may be down to Desmond’s mouthpieces to let the industry know what he is up to.
But one thing is for sure: all eyes will be on him for the foreseeable future.