Dutch printer Roto Smeets has raided the UK market to win two big contracts for magazines for tabloids.

The company will roll out just under 2m copies of People magazine in a contract for MGN, part of Trinity Mirror. The magazine comes with the Sunday People and the job runs from next May to 2005.

Quebecor currently prints the magazine web offset, but Roto Smeets will use Albert and Cerutti gravure presses.

A spokesman for Trinity Mirror said Roto Smeets won because of the gravure process, the digital kit it already had in place, and its experience of delivery on minidisc.

But he added that MGN "aims to work with Quebecor again".

The second win was a re-tender for around 2m Sunday Mirror Personal magazines a week.

Roto Smeets has produced this for two years, but the new deal extends the contract to 2006.

Dave Ewington, managing director of Roto Smeets UK, said his firm would add a new Albert 3.68m-wide press at its Deventer plant between Amsterdam and the German border to take the extra work.

It is one of Europes biggest machines and will take the firms total to five presses.

"Gravure is fighting back," he said. "You get better printing and quality on gravure than with offset and theres no binding waste.

"We won the contract partly on the strength of our performance with Personal."

He said Roto Smeets would also increase its Ferag loose inserting and Ferag minidisc winding capacity for efficient inserting into the newspapers.

Story by Jez Abbott