It is as yet unclear how the company’s print employees will be affected by the restructuring, which initially looks more likely to effect editorial, sales, finance and production departments.

The Wolverhampton Express and Star and Shropshire Star titles are being moved out of the company’s West Bromwich print plant and will now be printed at other group print centres.

However, some weekly newspapers will still be printed at the site. At this stage Unite told PrintWeek that it did not know how many, if any, jobs at the site would go.

The company has said that staff levels across the board are to be cut by around 10%, believed to be more than 100 employees.

This year has seen the newspaper printing industry constantly contracting with plants at Liverpool, Northampton, Colchester, Leeds and Peterborough either up for closing, planned for closure or facing job cuts. Unite has said that the onset of printing super sites looking to contract print during the day will lead to even more site closures in the future.

MNA’s restructuring program will lead to the two main businesses, The Express & Star based in Wolverhampton and Shropshire Newspapers based in Telford, merged into one company with a single Board of Directors.

There will be mergers in the production, finance and classified advertising departments as well as possible structural changes in editorial, advertising and circulation.

The company is hoping to reduce costs by about £3m and is now looking for voluntary redundancies.

No further information was available at the time of writing.