Fairfax Media has confirmed that it has bought the ‘Beaudesert Times’ and ‘Jimboomba Times’in southeast Queenslan

A statement says Fairfax Regional Media has purchased from the Hodgson family  – third generation publishers – the “highly regarded Queensland regional titles at Beaudesert and Jimboomba in Queensland’s fast growing south-east corridor”.

Fairfax Regional Media chief executive Allan Browne says he is proud to announce the addition of “these outstanding newspapers” to the company’s regional media network of more than 200 titles across Australia.

The deal went through last Monday, with Fairfax acquiring the business, with plant which includes a Tensor-based newspaper press and CMC newspaper wrapping equipment similar to that used at Fairfax’s ‘Canberra Times’ print site.

Browne says all staff were offered continuation of employment. “There is a large external printing customer base, which we intend on servicing and growing in the future,” he told GXpress.

The ‘Beaudesert Times’ traces its history to October 1908, when it resulted from the merger of two existing titles, and the Hodgson connection to the same time. Frank Hodgson (grandfather of managing director Mark Hodgson) worked as manager and accountant for Irish-born politician Patrick Leahy, who held a controlling interest.

Hodgson bought the paper progressively following Leahy’s death in 1927.

The paper has been a PANPA newspaper of the year finalist, and won seven major prizes in the 2003 Queensland Country Press Association awards.

Its recent growth has come hand-in-hand with that of the neighbouring town of Jimboomba, for which the company launched a new title in 1991. The company’s website recalls how Hodgson had called staff together and challenged them to come up with ideas on circulation growth.

General manager John Bartlett rose to the challenge with a mock-up of a quarterfold publication he called the ‘Jimboomba Times’, and the first issue was produced that November. Both papers were then printed on a Heidelberg MO sheetfed press. In 2001 circulation hit 12,000 copies, and the paper is now distributed to 20,000 homes and businesses in the area.

The company installed a four-unit Goss Community with an unusual DIN-sized 630 mm cut-off, to bring production inhouse in 2001, adding four-high Tensor towers to it in 2004 and 2006, adding QI automatic colour register and cutoff controls at the same time. In 2009, it added a CMC 2000 system for plastic wrapping.

Fairfax haas its own high-capacity production site at Ormiston in suburban Brisbane.

Pictured: The newly-extended press in 2006