WA NEWSPAPER PRINT PLANT TO CLOSE

IVE is closing the Mandurah newspaper printing plant it acquired in October 2020 as part of its five-year, $100m deal to print and distribute ACM publications. Last date for printing will be 19 May.

The closure comes after a major client switched to a digital only edition, and will probably bring the curtain down on several WA local newspapers. The plant also printed the WA edition of the Australian Financial Review. 

According to Peter Coleman’s newspaper industry news site GX Report, the Mandurah site runs a single width manroland Uniset 75 with Megtec dryer, with six towers and two folders, which was installed in 2011.

Its closure means the biggest remaining newspaper printer in WA is Seven West Media in Perth, which has a pair of presslines.

Ownership of the Mandurah plant has reflected the changing world of regional newspapers. It was originally owned by Fairfax, then by Nine when it bought Fairfax, then by ACM when it bought the company’s regional newspaper business, and for the past two and half years by IVE, as ACM owner Antony Catalano followed his strategy of publishing but printing.

Newspapers set to close unless a buyer is found are the Bunbury Mail, the Mandurah Mail, the Augusta-Margaret River Mail, and the Busselton-Dunsborough Mail. All jobs are likely to go.

ACM said it had “no choice but to consider options in the face of a number of challenges faced by the company and the media industry more broadly, which have been exacerbated by the 80 per cent increase to newsprint costs, which are well publicised”.