Fairfax Media will spend an estimated $9.5 million on extensions to its North Richmond print centre as part of preparations for the closure of its Chullora, NSW, plant.
The figure is included in a planning application for the work at 159 Bells Line of Road lodged with the local council. No other documents have been provided yet… something which attracts an exclamation mark in the Hawkesbury council’s online planning tracker.
Fairfax has again turned to Crows Nest-based architects Turner Hughes to handle the project. In a testimonial on the firm’s website, the printing project manager Barrie Murphy says the firm has completed five press centres for Fairfax and Rural Press around Australia over a period of 12 years. “Turner Hughes has worked diligently to understand our business and create successful projects," he says.
Industry estimates suggest the $9.5 million project cost – which does not include printing plant – would provide a very substantial facility, big enough to accommodate at least two of the presses Fairfax has for relocation. The spacious site includes the former headquarters of Rural Press Limited in a commanding position overlooking undeveloped rural land.
Fairfax Media operates a busy single-width press at the site – with heatset, coldset and UV capability – and is further extending the Ferag mailroom there. It is understood substantial increases in capacity would be needed across the group’s North Richmond, Beresfield and Canberra to replace the current 800 tonnes a week of Chullora’s production.
Print orders for the flagship ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ are however, expected to be less by the June 2014 closure, with the “managed reduction” of circulation.
Estimates in the Fairfax of the Future document given to investors and analysts provide $42 million for plant relocation and capital costs, a sum the group expects to more than recoup in a year’s saving from the closure of the Chullora and Tullamarine (Melbourne) print centres. Tullamarine houses three ten-year-old manroland Geoman presses, while Chullora has five Colorman presses from the same maker. There are also extensive Ferag and Müller Martini mailroom systems at the sites.
There are no details yet to indicate whether Fairfax has plans to extend the smaller Wendouree, Victoria, site of its Ballarat print centre, or that of Fairfax Regional Printers in Beresfield, NSW.
Although Fairfax expects to net $65 million from the sale of Chullora and Tullamarine, the 62 per cent cost saving from moving production out of town is not all about real estate.
Fairfax will seek to harness the lower manning costs and more harmonious industrial atmosphere of its regional sites in the development, emulating that of the Ormiston (Queensland) site, the ground most modern in Australia. Described as “a print site of the future” by an employee who contacted us, it is understood to boast low labour costs and the lowest waste with the lowest average print run in the group. “No other side in Australia can print dailies with only six employees across all departments,” we were told.
• The Fairfax print sites in North Richmond and Beresfield were among those highly commended in the PANPA Newspaper of the Year technical excellence awards last Thursday. At the following day’s Future Forum masterclasses, and in a nod to a GXpress report (‘Little engines that might’) printing and logistics chief executive Bob Lockley remarked that it was “good to see the little sites chugging along”.
• PANPA Future Forum’s first day