A weekly broadsheet is set to invest around £5.5m in a new printing press.

The Newbury Weekly News has signed a contract for a Goss Universal 6 tower at its headquarters in west Berkshire.

It will substantially increase its colour capacity and the speed of production for the Newbury Weekly News, contract customers Maidenhead Advertiser and the Henley Standard, and sister titles The Advertiser, Thatcham News, Wantage and Grove Review, The Oracle (Andover), all free newspapers.

Company deputy chairman John Robertson said: “The Newbury Weekly News has always cherished its independence and printed all its own products.

“We will now be able to do substantially more colour, and at a faster rate.

“We’ve worked closely with our major contract customers, the Maidenhead Advertiser and the Henley Standard whose products we have printed for a very long time.

“This will move us up into the next league of printing and we will have some spare capacity.”

The next stage in the process will be to identify and install an upgraded online inserting system.

Publication of the broadsheet Newbury Weekly News is the core activity of Blacket Turner & Co Ltd, the newspaper’s holding company.

The newspaper has served the area for more than 130 years and the current press, a web-offset Solna, was first installed in 1984 and then extended in 1996.

Each Newbury Weekly News issue runs to an average 32-page broadsheet section, a 24-page property broadsheet and a 28-page leisure and pleasure section.

The new press will be double circumference, and give 96 pages in one pass, all in full colour.

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