Archant has announced that it is to invest £12.5m in its Norwich printing facility where three of its daily newspapers are printed.

The company says that the installation of two new printing towers will increase the printing capacity at its Thorpe Print Centre by 50 per cent.

The £25m centre was opened in 1995 and currently prints around 70 different publications including the Eastern Daily Press, East Anglian Daily Times and Evening News, along with many weekly titles.

The new investment follows a strategic review of Archant printing operations, and will see 14 new jobs created.

The work is expected to by completed by December 2004.

Archant chief executive John Fry said: “This is a major investment in our core newspaper publishing business and will enable us to produce larger papers with more supplements and also to offer greater colour availability.”

The two new state-of-the-art Goss tower presses will bring the total number of printing towers at the plant to six, along with three newspaper folders and ten reelstands.

The future need for additional capacity was factored into the planning of the original print centre design when it was built and its foundations are ready to accept the two new additional 88-tonne towers.

Archant Print managing director Peter Dodds said: “Within two years of bringing the Thorpe Print Centre into production in 1995, demand had increased to such an extent that a third shift was recruited to cope with round-the-clock printing schedules.

“Some 3.5m papers and supplements are now printed each week and with our Archant newspaper publishing colleagues planning to launch many more new titles and editions, a new press-line is much needed.

“The additional capacity is also designed to address their advertising customers ever increasing need for more colour availability.”

The new capacity will also include other technology such as digital inking and automatic register control. These will also be retrofitted to the existing presses to help improve colour quality, consistency and press running performance.

A 50 per cent increase in supplement and magazine inserting capability is also planned for post press operations.

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