Newcastle Chronicle and Journal Ltd has confirmed that a £2.6m investment will go ahead to increase colour capacity on its presses.

The development will give it the capability of producing newspapers, which include a four-edition Chronicle and five-edition Journal, with up to 128 pages in back-to-back colour.

All the additional colour capacity will be in place by November this year - though additional colour in The Journal's Homemaker section will be available from August.

Confirmation of this £2.6m investment brings the total investment in presses in the North East to over £17m.

A new £14.4m press at Teesside is due to be operational from September, when the Evening Gazette will convert to a smaller compact format.

Part of editor Steve Dyson's brief when he was appointed two years ago was to turn the Gazette, one of last remaining evening broadsheets, into a tabloid.

The Teesside press will be capable of printing 70,000 copies per hour and will be able to produce up to 128 tabloid pages in full colour.

The investment is part of a £90m injection by the Gazette's parent company Trinity Mirror, which also brought new newspaper presses to Cardiff and Birmingham.

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