Printing of the Yorkshire Post could be moving out of Leeds to a new home.

The Johnston Press regional morning title is currently printed in the same building where the editorial teams sit for the YP and sister paper the Yorkshire Evening Post.

Management is currently weighing up its options because a contract to print the Financial Times in Leeds is due to expire at the end of October and move to News International’s plant in Merseyside.

If it does, printing of the YP could be moved up to Johnston Press’ plant in Sunderland, where the Sunderland Echo is published.

The YP’s ‘Saturday’ magazine and property sections would most probably move to JP’s plant in Dinnington, near Sheffield, where the Yorkshire Evening Post is now printed.

It is not known how many redundancies, if any, would happen as a result of any such move.

A memo to staff from Nick Boxall, MD of the company’s printing arm Sheffield and Leeds Web, said: “Subject to final contract signature, the FT will move from Leeds to NI at Knowsley at the end of the existing contract at end Oct 2009.

“We are currently assessing the impact of this decision on the print operation. We are looking at options to replace the FT with other external work.

“If these options are not successful, we will need to review the existing structure within Leeds Web.”

In a follow-up note to staff, Yorkshire Post Newspapers MD Chris Green said: “If this does go ahead, and it may not as he has a lot of options to consider…..then we would probably print the YP at Sunderland apart from the Saturday magazine and property sections which would print at Dinnington.”

Insiders at Yorkshire Post Newspapers have told HTFP that staff are worried this could be the first step towards closing the YP/YEP building altogether and moving editorial teams out of the city centre.

Both Mr Boxall and Mr Green had not responded to a request for further comment at the time of publication.

Comments

Chris Youett, Esq, (07/09/2009 09:55:08)
When will they ever learn? If the YP/YEP is printed in another county, it will immediately knock 5 to 10K off their respective circulations.
People aren’t stupid: they know when they are being short-changed with overnite papers full of stale new pretending to be an evening.
If management move the editorial side to out of town, there will be even less real news in it – and this will accelerate circulation decline even faster.
The way forward is to start actively marketing those titles and stop giving away their digital services for almost nothing. This is what Lord Beaverbrook would do if he was alive today.

angryanderson (08/09/2009 10:47:29)
It’s scandalous that a city the size of leeds can’t sustain its own newspaper printing plant. Yet another cost cutting move by YP, who have a track record of axing print facilities aligned to local newspapers and moving them scores of miles away (Scarborough being one example). This means more jobs lost, much earlier deadlines and day-old news in the case of evening newspapers.

Humph (08/09/2009 14:40:30)
Do people really care that much where their paper is printed? Isn’t Sheffield, where the YEP is being printed according to this report, in Yorkshire? Did people stop buying the York Press when they switched printing to Darlington? The sales probably continued falling but that won’t be becuase of where a paper is printed. The Yorkshire Post has always been printed overnight and is it stale? No, so why should an earlier YEP be stale? And why does a possible move out of town for editorial mean even less “real news” in it. Chris Youett, Esq seems more interested in doing down the work of journalists than anything else. Shame on you