The 2m-a-year deal was secured with a group-wide offering that will see Wyndeham expand its long-standing repro relationship with NatMags into print for the first time.

Reveal is an oversize A4, stitched title and the first issue is 96pp plus covers. Wyndeham Argent will handle repro for the magazine, while Heron will print the text pages and Impact the covers. Paper stock is 60gsm UPM Star made at Caledonian Paper, which is FSC certified.

NatMags group manufacturing director Alice Beattie said that finding a printer able to produce a major weekly to the timescales required had proved "less difficult than I'd been led to believe". "I've been talking to Heron for two to three years, and this was a good opportunity to use them. I spoke to our existing print suppliers, but the deal from Wyndeham all around was better the bottom line was they could do the schedule."

The launch issue of Reveal had a print run of 600,000, and if the title fulfils the publisher's ambitions it will also become the biggest single edition magazine to be printed at Heron.

The title looks set to go head-to-head with Emap's Closer, printed by New Jarrold Printing, which has an ABC of 476,794.

"We're very, very pleased. Reveal is making use of the total Wyndeham offering so it's really demonstrating what we're about with the power and skill sets we have in the group," said Wyndeham divisional group sales director Jon Hearnden.

Reveal is printed and finished over the weekend, and Hearnden said the project had involved "meticulous production planning". "We had to be sure that the scheduling wouldn't affect other jobs so we spent a lot of time looking at the manufacturing plan," he added.

Story by Jo Francis