The two titles will be printed on Manroland triple-width presses. The Financial Times will be printed at Knowsley in the North West of England and at Eurocentral in Scotland while the London Evening Standard will be printed in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire.
News UK sales and marketing manager James Beardow said: “We have a long-standing relationship with both the Financial Times and the London Evening Standard and we’re delighted that they’ve chosen us to continue printing their titles.”
News UK has declined to reveal what volume of print the contract means for its Broxbourne plant, or its value but the Evening Standard has an average circulation of 913,842 copies daily, from Monday to Friday, according to the latest available ABC data. The Financial Times is published daily, Monday to Saturday, and has an average daily circulation of 210,481.
The business has also secured a contract to manage the delivery of Time Out magazine to free distribution sites in London, including the capital’s underground and rail stations as well as tourist venues.
It will also continue to deliver subscription copies of Time Out through the Royal Mail and its ‘direct to consumer’ service.
News UK chief operating office Chris Taylor said: “News UK is committed to investing in both its print and digital media business.
“Our growing distribution offering along with the successful renewal of external print contracts reflect our intention to expand this important side of the business.”
Time Out publisher Alex Batho added: “We’re very excited to be able to take advantage of News UK’s experience of large-scale print distribution, and to continue to inspire Londoners to do more in this amazing city.”
News UK's print operations are run by its subsidiary, Newsprinters Group, across three print sites in Broxbourne, Knowsley and Glasgow.
The company prints 1.2bn copies of The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times every year, as well as a further 800m non-News UK titles.
Combined, the three sites print around 2bn newspapers a year, or 40m a week, of which 16m are for third parties.
News UK’s titles have a weekly print reach of approximately 10.5m readers, and represent around 32.5% of UK circulation of national dailies.
The business employs around 2,600 staff in operations spanning journalism, printing, distribution and back-office support.
