Last week, News Corporation's second-quarter results revealed a fall in the operating profits of its newspaper division from 106m to 39.7m.

This was due to provisional redundancy payments of 57m ($99m) associated with the move to new plants at Broxbourne (formerly Waltham Cross) and Glasgow and the upgrade of Knowsley in Liverpool.

NI chief executive Les Hinton said about two thirds of its 1,000-strong production workforce would lose their jobs when the company's 600m print investment plan, which includes a move away from Wapping and installing 22 MAN Roland Colorman XXL presses, was announced in 2004.

In a webcast statement following the release of the results last Thursday, Murdoch confirmed that the new sites would "make do with only 350" of the 1,000 currently employed across sites at Glasgow, Knowsley and Wapping.

"We are making this investment in order to retain our market dominance in a highly competitive market place. Using outdated technology with limited colour capacity was not an option," said Murdoch.

NI could not provide a breakdown of jobs lost but said the redundancies would be "phased" from mid-2007 to mid-2008.
"Everyone involved is aware of their future, and there were a number of volunteers," said a NI spokeswoman.

NI included the provisional redundancy costs in the last quarter's results because it was legally required to once it had officially announced the restructure.

The company said there were plans to redevelop parts of Wapping while retaining editorial operations there.

News International, the British arm of News Corp, meanwhile shrugged off media speculation that it had made the Telegraph Group an offer to share its new facilities.

Last week The Observer claimed that NI's Hinton offered to print the Telegraph's daily and Sunday editions to help offset the company's planned 600m investment into the sites.

However, while NI refused to comment on "that article", a spokeswoman for the Telegraph Group said: "We are talking to a number of people and examining all options. Nothing has been ruled out."