Media House Group operates in six European territories, including Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland.

It lays claim to being the biggest print and digital publisher across the island of Ireland, with its titles including the Irish Independent and Belfast Telegraph as well as a raft of local papers.

In an interview with Irish broadcaster RTÉ, Mediahuis CEO Peter Vandermeersch said that the group needed to make an unspecified number of editorial redundancies due to the huge changes impacting the newspaper business.

“The viability, and that’s important to stress, is really good. Across six countries we have revenues of almost €1bn and we make €150m operating profit.

“We want to prepare ourselves for the future, for the next three, four or five years.”

Asked if the printed newspaper had a future, he said: “To be honest, and to say this as the CEO of a printing company, I don’t think so”.

“I literally announced to the company this week, we start the process from hybrid [print and digital] to digital only. That’s a process that could take ten years, but it’s clear that in the twenties, in this decade, many printed newspapers will disappear.”

Vandermeersch added: “At Mediahuis International, at the group, we have a programme ‘only digital 2030’ we are preparing our company. We probably will print some Saturday or Sunday products, but during the week print will disappear all over Europe.”

Over the past couple of years Mediahuis has also shuttered two printing plants and outsourced printing of its newspapers. 

“It’s not a strategic asset for a company to have a printing plant,” he added. 

The group is gearing up its digital offering and plans to grow its digital subscriber base. 

“It’s clear if we want to replace the hundreds of thousands of people buying a paper that we have to go to 200,000 or 250,000 [digital subscribers].”

Last month media group National World said it was transitioning to a “digital-only” operating model, although this appears likely to involve new ways of producing physical newspapers, such as via digital printing. The group criticised current newspaper production methods for requiring “multiple industrial processes that should have been abandoned years ago”.