The news came as NI announced that it has picked Ferag to supply mailroom kit to its new plants in Waltham Cross and Glasgow, and to its upgraded plant in Knowsley, Liverpool.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned publisher of The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and The News of the World is to install Ferag's UTR gripper and MultiStack bundling units at the three plants.

Brian McGee, News International group director of manufacturing, said that he had chosen Ferag's kit because of the UTR gripper.

"Due to the formats and speeds we'll be running, we were particularly focused on the transfer from press to gripper and into the stackers. We found that the controlled and synchronised transfer of products to the UTR grippers was excellent."

Ferag, which is sold in the UK by WRH Marketing in Harlow, Essex, declined to put a price on the deal, but it is understood to be worth tens of millions of pounds.

The decision not to install inserting equipment means that NI's papers will be assembled by newsagents.

Supplements and commercial inserts will be polybagged at Arvato in Liverpool and sent directly to distributors, according to sources.

And inserters will not be needed to collate NI's titles, because the triple-width MAN Roland Colorman presses on order have enough capacity to produce multi-sections newspapers in a single pass.

The presses to be installed at Waltham Cross can produce up to 120pp tabloid in straight mode, but it will be possible to run two presses into one folder to produce a 240pp tabloid or a 120pp broadsheet, at up to 86,000 copies per hour.

McGee added: "Our expectations with the project are extremely high and we feel that Ferag was the best option to make it a success."

Story by Josh Brooks