Proposals to close the Leicester plant were unveiled earlier this week as part of the wider announcement about the creation of centralised subbing hubs in Nottingham and Hull.

It will leave Stoke and Derby as the only Northcliffe centres in the Midlands and North with printing facilities, following the closure of the Grimsby plant last year.

The company's four North-East titles - the Hull Daily Mail, Grimsby Telegraph, Scunthorpe Telegraph and Lincolnshire Echo - are already printed overnight and now the Leicester Mercury, Nottingham Evening Post and Derby Evening Telegraph are set to follow.

Midlands regional editor Malcolm Pheby said: "We are still in consultation about the closure of the plant but a possible consequence of closure is that we could be moving to overnight printing. There is no question of that."

"We are looking at the possibility of closing the Leicester plant and if that plan goes ahead it will affect the capacity of our remaining plants."

Mr Pheby, who is also editor of the Nottingham Evening Post, added that it was likely the currently two-edition Post would move to a single early edition if the plan went ahead.

The Derby Evening Telegraph already publishes one morning edition, printed overnight, and an evening edition, but it too is likely to move to a single edition.

One further possible consequence of the move would be that both the Derby Evening Telegraph and the Nottingham Evening Post would drop the "evening" from their names.

It is unclear whether Northcliffe's other Midlands daily, The Sentinel, Stoke, will also move to overnight printing.

The four North-East titles, previously printed at Grimsby, are all currently printed overnight at either Derby or Leicester.

Hull Daily Mail editor and North-East regional editor John Meehan said the move to overnight printing in Derby had improved the quality of the paper.

"I am comfortable with the decision we made to move to overnight publishing. I feel things have worked well," he said.

"My personal view on timed editions is that they used to be relevant when we could only update the news agenda in print, but now we can update our website several times an hour."