The proposed capacity reduction is understood to include the removal of two Goss M850 presses as well as a Muller Martini stitching line and binding line.

Parent company Walstead Investments confirmed that the proposal could result in up to 105 redundancies across Southernprint and Southern Binders, which employ around 300 staff in total who are now in a 90-day consultation.

According to Unite national officer Steve Sibbald, in addition to the redundancies, remaining staff at the sites could face changes to their terms and conditions. "There's no doubt that they will be proposing changes to the terms and conditions of remaining staff," he said.

The move is reminiscent of the restructure of sister company Wyndeham Heron in 2008, when Roy Kingston, who recently rejoined Wyndeham as chief operating officer, was brought in as an HR consultant to assist with job cuts.

Sibbald said: "We are not surprised given recent events that this proposal has been put forward; we had been speculating for some weeks that there would be further reductions either at Heron or Southernprint, or elsewhere in the group.

"We knew they'd lost some contracts at Southernprint but we thought the IPC work might have protected them somewhat, but obviously they haven't got as much work as they need."

Walstead stressed that the move, which it blamed on overcapacity in the magazine printing sector, was unrelated to the its recent acquisition of Apple Web Offset, despite the proximity of the two announcements.

Apple Web Offset's presses, which include three Manroland Unisets and a Komori System 20, are used for the production of low-gsm publications for the newspaper, inserts and supplements market.

The Warrington-based print site also houses four Muller Martini saddle stitching lines and two Muller Martini Corona binding lines, as well as facilities for online loose inserting.

Walstead's announcement comes just over two weeks after Polestar announced plans to cut up to 200 jobs at Varnicoat, as part of its bid to ditch excess capacity and divest itself of unprofitable work.

Sibbald said that scale of job cuts in the UK magazine printing sector over the past two years meant that the industry would be left facing a "serious skills shortage" when volumes return as the economy gets back into a growth cycle.

"If I was a publisher now thinking five years ahead I'd be extremely nervous," he said. "Once people have been made redundant from the industry they don't tend to come back."