The media group shut its small Blantyre print operation near Glasgow at the end of June, at a cost of £1.4m including a £1m writedown in the value of fixed assets. It also consolidated pre-press production for its regional titles at its Liverpool site.
A spokeswoman told PrintWeek: “There are no plans to close any other sites at the moment. Blantyre was a really small site and production has been easily absorbed into our other plants.
"We are striving for efficiencies all over the business and are looking at different ways of doing things."
Trinity Mirror Printing has seven other print sites: Birmingham, Cardiff, Cardonald, Newcastle, Oldham, Teesside and Watford. It is PrintWeek's reigning Newspaper Printer of the Year.
In the group’s interim results, for the six months to 28 June, overall sales were down 11% to £288.5m and operating profits fell to £19.6m from £60m once restructuring charges and other one-off costs were taken into account.
Pre-tax profits were £12.1m (2014: £50.5m) on a statutory basis, or £47m (2014: £48.2m) on an adjusted basis excluding one-off items, restructuring charges, pension charges and other write-offs.
Chief executive Simon Fox said the print advertising market, which fell by 19%, had been “more challenging” than anticipated.
“As a result, whilst continuing to invest in people and technology to drive the ongoing growth in digital audience and revenue, we have taken further action to address our print cost base,” he stated.
Fox said he remained confident of achieving growth in the medium term.
As well as doubling its structural cost savings target, the group has also cut its capex budget by a third, to £10m.
Contract printing sales were down by £2m to £17.5m, and the group also ceased newsprint supply to the Independent and i newspapers during the period, which involved £5.8m worth of paper but had no impact on profit.
The publisher also said it had benefited from a fall in newsprint prices, which had helped it reduce overall publishing costs by 10%.
Together with the interim results, it also announced that the group’s Sport Media contract publishing wing has won the contract to produce the official pre-tournament magazine and match day programmes for the upcoming Rugby World Cup, which starts next month.
Sport Media already produces match day programmes for a number of Premier League clubs, but this is its first tournament project. The magazines and programmes will be produced and printed in-house, but details about the likely scale of the print runs involved are not currently available.
Trinity Mirror also included a contingent liability note relating to legal issues surrounding the phone hacking scandal. Mirror Group Newspapers is seeking permission to appeal the May court ruling when eight hacking victims were awarded £1.2m in damages.
The group has increased its provision to £16m, and stated: “It is too soon to be able to reliably estimate how these matters will proceed and their financial impact.”
Trinity Mirror’s share price rose from 140p to 153p following yesterday’s announcement.
