Aberdeen Journals employs around 400 staff members at its Lang Stracht site, across its all of its departments, for the Press and Journal, Evening Express, Aberdeen Citizen and ScotsAds publications.
The newspaper publisher said it had entered into a minimum 30-day consultation with all 46 print production employees from the Aberdeen facility, however the company moved to reassure editorial and commercial staff that they would continue to be based at the site.
An Aberdeen Journals spokeswoman said: "The proposed changes are necessary in the current market to ensure a strong future for our newspapers. We intend to work with our staff members to ensure the best possible outcome for each individual during this period."
"The company’s proposals are required, not only to stay competitive, but also to create new opportunities for the business and improve services for our customers," she added.
According to Aberdeen Journals the move follows "a thorough investigation of all possible avenues to maintain an economically viable and sustainable printing plant in Aberdeen for the long term".
The option of staff transfers will be considered as part of the consultation.
The company confirmed to PrintWeek that production at Aberdeen Journals' printing facility would continue as normal throughout the consultation period with around 80,000 Press and Journal rolling of the presses nightly, 50,000 Evening Express copies daily and combined weekly press runs of just under 100,000 of the Aberdeen Citizen and ScotsAds.
Production at the facility is carried out on a five-tower Goss Colorliner, which was installed in 1990 and has two stacked mono-units and two folders. The company said that it would look at options for selliing the equipment as part of the consultation.
This latest consultation follows two rounds of redundancies in 2012, which saw around 10 employees lose their jobs with the closure of Aberdeen Journals' city centre site in February with almost 60 more axed when the company outsourced its distribution to John Menzies.
It comes as DC Thomson enters the second month of production on its new Goss Colorliner Compact Printing System (CPS) at its Dundee printing facility.
Installation of the eight-tower configuration model, by a team of Goss engineers, began last summer and it was commissioned at the end of November with around 80,000 copies of the Courier and 30,000 Evening Telegraph issues a day now being printed in cold set.
The machine is part of a £25m investment at DC Thomson that will see the new equipment fitted in the coming weeks with two Goss Ecocool heatset dryers and automatic plate loading devices.
Heatset provides opportunities for inserts, magazines and brochures, which the publisher does not currently produce.
The spend also includes the refurbishment of the company's three exisiting Goss Colorliner equipment into one, seven-tower press with two folders, and the refitting of the facility to accomodate the new and refurbished machines.
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