A £6m investment by Aberdeen Journals will mean double the number of colour pages for the Evening Express and Press and Journal.

Two new colour towers have been added to the company's printing press, which has doubled its colour capability.

By mixing four basic colours - cyan, magenta, yellow and black - the towers can produce all the colours of the spectrum.

The massive 15-metre steel structures had to be lifted into place by crane - a job that involved fitting a higher roof.

The mammoth task started in January when the three-metre foundations were dug.

Production manager Dave Wilson said: "It was quite an undertaking. We had old presses in that area and had to cut out concrete and reinforcing steel.

"We then had to put in a cork base to absorb the vibration and build new support."

Unusually, the towers are at right angles to the printing press, which meant a laser was needed to align the 120-tonne towers, which must operate to an accuracy of within one thousandth of an inch - and to help preserve those tolerances a new electronic control system has also been fitted to the press.

The two original colour towers will be over-hauled during the next few months, bringing them up to the standard of the new ones.

Aberdeen Journals has produced newspapers for more than 250 years, the first of which were printed by hand. The Evening Express was launched in 1879 and contained just four pages.

Ten years later a Hoe printing machine was bought - the only one in Scotland capable of turning out 12-page papers.

Colour was introduced 12 years ago and today's Goss-Harland system can produce 60,000 papers an hour.

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