Trinity Mirror Printing (TMP) will start trading on 1 January 2005, with the three Mirror Colour Print (MCP) sites in Watford, Oldham and Cardonald Park and six other local sites becoming local operating companies within the group.

All nine plants will report directly to Rupert Middleton, Trinity Mirror group director of manufacturing, rather than to local management.

In an e-mail to staff last week announcing the reorganisation, Middleton said the single network would "improve our performance on delivery, quality and unit costs".

He said that there were no plans to cut jobs as a result of the reorganisation, and that the change would not affect employment terms or pensions for current employees.

A spokesman for Trinity Mirror said: "The advantage is that we will run our print sites as a single, coherent network as opposed to discretely managed sites, and thereby significantly improve the service we offer our customers, both internal and external."

The nine sites in the reorganisation are MCP's three sites, the new Fort Dunlop plant in Birmingham, which began production in the summer, and local print facilities in Liverpool, Teesside, Newcastle, Blantyre and Cardiff.

The announcement of the reorganisation comes just a week after MCP and Guardian Media Group revealed a 45m investment in the Oldham plant to print GMG's north-east regional titles (PrintWeek, 25 November 2004).

Story by Josh Brooks