A business journal first published in 1982 is this year celebrating its silver jubilee.

Swindon Business News was launched by South African-born journalist Lorne Barling and is now seen a valuable resource for business people in and around the Wiltshire town.

Having moved to Swindon in the early ‘80s to begin writing a project for the Financial Times, he saw the potential growth of Swindon as a business town.

He set the Business News up on the advice of a local borough councillor, and his experience of working at the Guardian and Financial Times has already taught him about what readers expect - and the first edition of Swindon Business News led with a cover story on trading among local firms.

It now has a print run of 10,000 with 3,000 businesses regularly receiving the journal on a monthly, rather than bi-monthly, basis, a significant change to the original publication.

Lorne said: "Back in 1982 the country had been through a recession which I had seen first-hand through my work at the FT, but Swindon was looking up and business was beginning to take off."

Swindon Business News is also now available to download from www.swindon-business.net and as it celebrates its 25th anniversary he has no plans to change its content or format, adding: "It seems to be well-received still and gets to surprising places. I have even had calls from America from people who have a copy asking about a particular story."

The layout and price have been adapted to conform with 21st century business culture but the format of the publication has otherwise changed very little since its early years of circulation in the 1980s.

A staff of six oversees its development and the innovative advance of technology has certainly helped the production process.

In 1982 they used photo typesetting before storing all the content and information on floppy disc. This made it easily accessible to a design agency that would play around with the concept and come up with a finished product before eventually being sent to the printers.