The magazine had been produced at Polestars Dunstable plant, Polestar Specialist Colour, for 32 years, but the switch to web will mean the closure of its press hall and the loss of 90 jobs. There will be no losses from the companys bindery.

Country Life will now be produced on either Polestar Chantrys Rockwell G14 or Heidelberg M600 web presses.

IPC production director Richard Hill said: "It is a great pity that there will be redundancies at Specialist Colour. But the decision to go to web has been looked at on and off for a number of years we decided to bite the bullet."

The new look issue, which will be on sale from 2 May, will be slightly smaller at 300x230mm compared to 318x235mm.

It will also have a higher quality 150gsm cover as opposed to 130gsm, along with weightier text pages of 100gsm UPM Star, compared with the old versions 90gsm.

Hill added that it made commercial sense to produce the magazines 60,000 copies using the web process, and that he believed the higher-quality papers would be more attractive to advertisers.

"The magazine will still be finished at Dunstable, which we are pleased about as they have been doing that for years. They understand the product, so there shouldnt be any problems," Hill said.

Story by John Davies