Marine industry publisher Riviera Maritime Media is the latest publisher to sign up to Express KCS, which will also lay out the company's technical journals.

Other pre-press firms, design agencies and publishers to follow the route offshore include AGI Media, United Business Media and J Walter Thompson.

Express KCS managing director Robert Berkeley said the new contract was important for the Delhi-based operation because it proved that his staff were capable of producing "world-class publication layouts".

"People are saying repro is dying, but this move proves that the service is changing," Berkeley said.

"If publishers can have the same or better service from a supplier in a low-cost economy, they are going to go for it, and this announcement proves they can. Equally, if the economics show that elements of the publishers' internal processes can be offshored, and the costs lowered, they will be."

Berkeley added that offshoring is "absolutely" the way of the future.
"We [the UK] no longer compete in terms of manufacturing of clothes, and just as container shipping changed that forever, so the internet will ensure that this [repro] will go the same way," Berkeley predicted.