Publisher Archant, formerly Ecng, has announced record profits of £26.1m.

The Norwich-based company is best known for publishing newspapers and magazines and is also involved in contract print and electronic publishing.

The operating profit for 2001 of £26.1m is up eight per cent, with turnover up 10.3 per cent at £144m.

The news comes as Archant was named as one of the UK’s top 100 private companies for the third year in a row. Click here to read our Profit Track 100 story.

Financial director Chris Lawrence (left) said: “These record results have been achieves through organic growth and acquisition, and we intend to pursue this growth strategy. Archant is in good health and we look forward to the future with confidence.”

Among the highlights for the past year were big increases in revenue and margins for the East London and Essex-based Recorder series. The Hertfordshire-based titles saw The Romford Recorder and Ham & High in particular saw circulation increases of more than five per cent.

Developments at the Eastern Daily Press included improvements to EDP Norfolk and the introduction of EDP Sunday in the Saturday paper.

EDP24 was voted the best regional web site of the year by the Newspaper Society.

Meanwhile, the Evening News was successfully re-launched with a focus on campaigning and community issues. The Norwich print centre was the first in the UK to adopt the latest computer-to-plate thermal imaging technology.

The East Anglian Daily Times was been redesigned to meet the demands of a changing market in Suffolk.

There was also a £1.5m investment in colour printing at Ipswich.

The company employs around 2,500 people across England and Scotland and publishes four daily newspapers, more than 50 weekly papers, 40 magazines and around 40 websites.

Its daily titles are the East Anglian Daily Times, Eastern Daily Press, Evening News (Norwich) and the Evening Star (Ipswich). Among the 60-plus weeklies are the Royston Crow, Weston & Somerset Mercury and the Ayrshire Leader Series.

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