Following a successful trial with Weight Watchers Irresistible Magazine, which F1 produced for the first time in September and has now completed three issues of, River is looking to expand its use of the service.

Nigel Mackay, production director at River Publishing, said: "Weight Watchers Irresistible Magazine has proved the service works well, which means we will now be considering more titles."

Mackay added that, although offshoring was not new, the way F1 had structured its service with a local account team combined with off-shore savings, had removed the risk historically associated with outsourcing overseas.

Ken Harrison, managing director of F1 Colour, said: "We're very pleased with how it's working. We load the files onto our server, Express KCS log on and work on the files, following the clients mark-up, and then load the PDFs into the on-line flat-plan which automatically pre-flights them. We then run the hard copy proofs at F1.

"The client benefits from considerable savings without having to do anything different themselves and with the piece of mind that if something needs a last-minute amend or face-to-face instruction we simply handle it at F1."