Competition is coming back in Perth’s print newspaper market with the imminent commissioning of a newly-installed all-colour press in the WA city.
Perth free distribution publisher Post Newspapers is securing its future with the installation of a 16-unit four-tower Goss Community imported from the US, and hopes to add contract work to production of its own hefty 50,000 weekly.
Since Ive Group’s closure of the former Fairfax Media/ACM print site at Mandurah and News’ earlier closure of Perth Print, Seven West Media’s Osborne Park plant has been the only newspaper printer in town.
One consequence of that has been the much-publicised closure of the WA print edition of the Australian Financial Review, which Nine Entertainment acquired as part of Fairfax.
Ive picked up the manroland-equipped hybrid Mandurah plant in 2020 as part of a five-year, $100 million print and distribution deal with ACM, but ACM’s decision to close four of its regional mastheads ahead of that – blaming production costs – prompted the premature closure.
News Corp Australia closed its own Perth Print operation – powered by two double-width manroland presses – after selling its Sunday Times newspaper to Seven West in 2016.
SWM’s West Australian Newspapers prints its own daily West Australian and other work – including its regional mastheads – on two linked hybrid KBA lines at the Osborne Park print site. Lately that had grown to include remaining work from Mandurah and Perth Print… and Post Newspapers.
Established by current owner Bret Christian as a monthly in 1977, Post is now a 50,000-circulation weekly with a strong position in Perth’s prosperous western suburbs. This week, The Australian’s Paul Garvey even called it, “arguably Perth’s most-loved newspaper”.
A report in this week’s edition says planning for the new press began two years ago with the closure of the Mandurah print site posing “an existential threat” to the Post and other independent media in the state, and leading to the closure of two country newspapers.
As the installation approached print trials, Christian said the new press would be printing Post weekly in the new financial year. Funding for the project has come from Post “and some supportive local business people”.
Peter Coleman
Pictured: Installation of the Goss press at Post Newspapers, and (below) Bret Christian with editor Bonnie Christian and staff outside the Post’s offices in Shenton Park (photos Post Newspapers, with thanks)