Rotherham Advertiser owner Garnett Dickinson is to invest £20m in building and equipping a new printing plant.

The purpose-built facility will be located on the Brookfield Park site at Manvers near Rotherham, a Rotherham Enterprise Zone, ten minutes from the existing plant.

The project has been awarded £570,000 funding by Yorkshire Forward, and the company’s existing factory at Eastwood Works will also be sold to help offset the cost of the new land and buildings.

Garnett Dickinson has third-party contracts in the shorter-run magazine and catalogue sector, producing magazines, brochures and catalogues for customers in the UK, mainland Europe and North America.

As part of the investment programme the company has bought a 48pp MAN Roland Lithoman IV printing press, and manufacturing capacity will be reconfigured from a combination of the new press together with its existing 32pp and 16pp web presses and B1 sheet-fed, to ensure capacity and customer demand are well matched.

The press will be delivered in November and is expected to be operational by January 2006.