Details of the UK plant remain under wraps, but a formal announcement is expected next week.

Midlands-based Howitt doesnt have gravure expertise, but is believed to be joining forces with an existing player and is understood to have placed a huge order for a variety of finishing kit.

However, there is also talk that Howitt, under ambitious managing director James Elliot who led the management buy-out/buy-in at the beginning of last year, could even go it alone.

Sources say the new plant will be equipped with four 3.68m-wide gravure presses.

Germanys Gruner+Jahr has ruled itself out of the equation, but sister Bertelsmann operation Maul-Belser is known to have been actively courting UK publishers.

Although Quebecor Worlds name has yet again been linked with a new gravure site in the UK, the firm has quashed talk that it is involved. It was described as "a fairly silly rumour", by director of communications Tony Ross.

This week speculation heightened that Quebecor could even close its Didier plant in France in favour of a new UK operation. The French gravure market is described as being in "disarray", and beset by problems of high social costs and militant unions.

Polestar has been closely following developments on the continent and in the UK. The group is the only sizeable publication gravure printer in the UK, and this week revealed a 25m spend on presses this week, including a second 3.52m gravure press for the UK.

Chief executive Barry Hibbert said it was difficult to comment on the new gravure operation until the full details were known. "Weve been expecting it for two years. We knew someone if not two would come. Theres no question this is a European market. Well respond accordingly."

With 60% of UK gravure work currently printed overseas, Hibbert acknowledged that a new UK player would make sense: "Schedules are getting tighter, making it almost impossible to do this work on the continent in future. Were not afraid of competition. After all, we are already competing with France and Germany."

"The difficulty is there is no pool of gravure printers, except ours. New technology helps, but we have trained ex-web offset printers to gravure and it is difficult."

Polestars new 3.52m gravure press will go in at the end of next year. Its not a foregone conclusion it will go to Varnicoat, but highly likely. Productivity and quality there is good, Hibbert added.

It will be a combination of additional capacity and capacity for News International. We need to rationalise peripheral kit, so it will depend on the state of the market.

Polestars investment plans also include four web offset presses, with one likely to come to the UK and two to Spain in the second quarter of 2003. A late-model secondhand 48pp for Revai in Hungary will go in at the end of this year.

Polestar has just completed its financial year, which Hibbert described as: A solid performance. Im very pleased with the way the group has responded. I have happy bankers and happy shareholders at the moment, which makes my life a lot easier.


Story by Jo Francis