Regional publisher Johnston Press is set to close another of its printing plants leaving just three covering the whole of England.
The company has announced plans to close its plant in Peterborough with the loss of 35 jobs.
The proposed closure follows the axeing of the company’s Leeds printing centre earlier this year which saw 25 jobs go.
If the closure plan goes ahead, the Telegraph is likely to be printed in future at JP’s Dinnington plant, near Sheffield.
It will mean JP has just three printing presses in England – at Sheffield, Sunderland and Portsmouth – plus a further one at Carn in Northern Ireland.
News of the latest announcement was carried on the website of the JP-owned Peterborough Telegraph today. It said the move followed a review of capacity across the company.
The Telegraph recently converted from daily to weekly format, but the company said the Peterborough press had been operating under capacity before the move.
David Crow, managing director group services, said: “Our other presses have the capacity to take on work from the Peterborough site and in the current climate it is a sensible business decision to look at consolidating our print operations.”
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It won’t be long before new recruits (chance is a fine thing) will be required to equip themselves with a John Bull printing outfit.
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Talk about all the eggs in one basket – well, three. There was virtually no time for routine maintenance at Dinnington three years ago, so goodness knows how they will find time to prevent the big rubber band going snap.
When it does, there will be lots of national and regional papers not hitting the streets for a day or so . . . if they are lucky.
Surely the long-term view is to find more outside work for the press at Peterborough and invest to keep it up to spec.
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At the same time as this closure, there are job losses at Dinnington also.
That rubber band has reached breaking point now (and incidently, that’s just about all that is holding the press together right now).
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