Immediate has switched the titles that were previously printed by Polestar to Wyndeham, effective immediately.
This includes flagship weekly Radio Times, which PrintWeek understands will begin printing at Wyndeham’s Peterborough site today (7 April).
It’s a major blow to Polestar, which sealed a £75m contract renewal with Immediate in 2013 for 30 titles, understood to be for a minimum of five years.
It also means that a potentially historic 100-year publisher-printer relationship is no more. Polestar and its various antecedents have been printing the Radio Times since the 1930s.
The Radio Times is Immediate’s flagship weekly among a host of prestigious brands. Its most recent ABC circulation was 732,765 and it has a huge subscriber base of more than 255,000.
The publisher’s other titles include BBC Top Gear, BBC Good Food and BBC Gardeners’ World magazine – the UK’s biggest selling gardening title – alongside a raft of children’s and special interest titles.
In a statement, Immediate production director Mal Skelton said: “I’m very pleased to have agreed this contract with Wyndeham. After reviewing our business requirements, their offer was clearly the most effective at meeting our needs and I’m looking forward to working with the Wyndeham team in the coming months and years.”
Wyndeham chief executive Paul Utting said the group was delighted to win the prestigious portfolio of work, and that Immediate had placed its confidence in Wyndeham. “Immediate is an exciting, growing business with a focus on the potential of print. And as a printer with an ongoing growth strategy we believe that there is an excellent fit between our businesses,” he said.
The value of the contract was not disclosed but is believed to be in excess of £5m per annum. The weekly titles will be produced at Wyndeham’s Peterborough site, which already produces a number of time-sensitive weeklies and is equipped with Ferag stitching kit. The children’s titles and perfect bound work will mainly be printed at Roche and Southernprint.
Polestar chief executive Barry Hibbert told PrintWeek: “We wish Immediate Media every success with the new printers after many years of unbroken service. We could not find a viable way of continuing that satisfied the needs of Polestar and Immediate Media.”
He said the “valuable time slot” that had been occupied by Radio Times at Polestar's Sheffield web offset facility had already been replaced with other work. “The total change represents a relatively small percentage of our overall sales,” he added.
Hibbert also said the group had re-signed and novated 75% of its contract base over the period since its pre-pack sale before Easter. “We have agreed some contracts will not be renewed where we could not reach agreement on price and schedule.”
The Immediate titles published out of its Bristol operation, and printed by William Gibbons, are not affected by the changes.
