The print plant, which produces daily local titles the Echo and the Shields Gazette as well as the Sun and News of the World, has installed three Agfa Polaris platesetters, which are exposing its N91 photopolymer plates.

The 1m pre-press spend also includes Agfa's Intellinet workflow, three Newsdrive interfaces and three Haase VSL 65 plate processors.

Gerry Kenny, general manager at the Sunderland plant, said: "We have already seen a major improvement in the quality, due to the superior register and generation of a first dot on a plate."

In the press hall, a 4m upgrade to the two Goss HT-70 presses is due to be completed by the end of October. The two presses will produce 54pp and 40pp of back-to-back full colour straight respectively.

The Sunderland Echo plant, part of the Johnston Press group, is now looking to increase its contract work. It already produces 925,000 copies of the News International titles per week, alongside 1.5m newspapers in the Johnston Press stable.

Kenny said: "With the faster throughput our scheduling is under tighter control and we can generate more options for both internal and external customers."

Four staff have taken voluntary redundancy in the pre-press area as a result of the upgrade to CTP.

Story by Josh Brooks