The restructure will affect all areas of the group's operations and will include a further 100m spend on print over the next three years. 

NNG, the regional division of Daily Mail & General Trust, has confirmed that jobs will be lost from the potential closures of four plants in its network.

The group expects the first phase of the two-year reorganisation programme to cost around 6.5m.

As first revealed by PrintWeek, presses in Lincoln, Grimsby and Hull are to be replaced by a single site at Elsham Wold in North Lincolnshire by the end of 2007.

A 30-day consultation period is currently underway at the group's Exeter site, which runs two single-width presses. Its likely closure will cause up to 70 job losses as work is consolidated at the recently-modernised Plymouth plant.

NNG managing director Michael Pelosi said that the group's print investment of around 150m over the past three years had shown "our commitment to producing high quality regional newspapers.

"These organisational and structural changes will help us to continue this successful strategy in the highly competitive and rapidly changing local newspaper market," he said.

Story by Josh Brooks