It emerged last week that GMG is investigating its printing options; including closing its presses down and contract printing, with speculation suggesting it has had very early talks with Trinity Mirror about moving its Berliner presses to Watford.

Unite national officer Steve Sibbald told PrintWeek that, if GMG went down the contract print route it would have a number of options, with Trinity its preferred partner.

"News International also has plants near by," he said. "But our preference would be for it to go to Trinity. They have done it before when they bought titles from the Kent Messenger and we are pretty sure we would have no problems with them, I doubt News International would be as cooperative, they weren't when they took on The Telegraph.

"Obviously we would rather GMG continued to print its own titles. That is what the members want, to retain jobs where they are. But, I keep saying this, we are moving to a point where there will be five or six newspaper supersites in the UK handling all the titles."

He added that the union has had very early talks with the newspaper publisher, but he did not expect anything to happen in the near future.

He also confirmed that around 100 employees at GMG's Stratford and Manchester plants Would be affected by the decision, which will lead to some job losses regardless of which way GMG goes.

He said: "at this stage they have simply flagged this up, they have had the courtesy to do that early. Initially the response was 'how the bloody hell are you going to do that' because of the Berliner format, but now we understand that they are thinking of moving presses to Watford it makes more sense.

"From our point of view, TUPE would definitely apply so we would expect our members to follow the presses, absolutely no question."