The factory, built in a converted section of MacDermid's existing production plant in Wigan, will produce around 5m Nappflex plates per year for newspaper printers in the UK and Italy.

MacDermid's plant in Wigan makes chemical products, but all flexo plates are currently produced at a plant in San Marco, California.

Up to 40 jobs will initially be created at the new facility, which is due to begin test production at the end of the month, with full production planned to go live on 1 September.

Steve O'Conor, the current managing director of the UK site, will take on responsibility for the plate production facility.

Werner Gerza, managing director of MacDermid's European subsidiary Napp Systems Europe, said that the decision to build the plant came around two years ago following the massive growth in Europe of flexo newspaper printing.

"We considered building in Italy, Eastern Europe and Ireland, but it made the most economic sense to build in the UK where we already had the building," he said.

The plant's first plates will go to Associated Newspapers' Harmsworth Quays (HQP), Europe's biggest flexo newspaper plant, at the start of September.

Associated Newspapers is also building a second, 80m flexo plant at Didcot in Oxfordshire, which will open in 2008.

MacDermid's new facility will initially run a single shift, but Gerza said it was likely that a second shift would be added next summer when a number of Cerutti flexo presses come on stream in Italy.

Story by Josh Brooks