Has newly-installed executive chairman of News Corp Australia Michael Miller arrived too late to broker a production deal between his company and Fairfax Media?

Prompting the question is a curious "exclusive" report in today's Australian which states that the two "are open to exploring shared printing facilities".

Someone - perhaps the "sources" quoted later in the story, or the unnamed "high level spokesman" referred to in the adjacent media reform report - must have told writer Jake Mitchell that. Those "sources" however, concede there are "less (sic) synergies" since Fairfax closed and sold its Chullora (Sydney) and Tullamarine (Melbourne) print facilities.

We'll let pass Mitchell's colourful "state-of-the-art" description of these; like the "older" used to describe the present arrangements, not entirely accurate... and a bit rich from a company which runs presses which are older than any of them.

Which perhaps brings us the purpose of the item: News Corp is in a bind with the age and obsolescence of its Melbourne print site, the second built with equipment from order placed in 1987. While the old mailroom equipment is being replaced and displaced electrical spares are now available from updates in Brisbane to keep presses running, there has been acknowledgement for years that the manroland Newsman lines at Westgate Park will have to be replaced with new.

It would be nice to think that someone - and Fairfax is the only real candidate - would be willing to help out with the multimillion dollar cost. But unlikely.

Miller enters as the likely lad to make it happen, with the runs on the board following persuading Fairfax it didn't need to build a new plant in Auckland - for which it had earmarked one of the Tullamarine presses - and could help take up some of the overcapacity on the (older) Goss lines of the New Zealand Herald. Although it would have to be admitted that the relationship between APN News & Media - of which he was chief executive prior to this year's musical chairs - and Fairfax was a lot more amicable than that between News and Fairfax in Australia.

Plant sharing between News and APN - where the former's 15 per cent holding looks increasingly like effective control - would be much easier.

Mitchell cites cooperation on The Newspaper Works' 'Influential by Nature' marketing campaign during Miller's chairmanship while chief executive of APN, and there is something in this... indeed that News, Fairfax, APN and Seven West worked together to form the industry body in the first place.

And here's a real role for the mooted new-found cooperation: Emerging digital newspaper printing technology presents multiple opportunities to cut print production costs and the "tyranny of distance" of Australia's vast geography.

News put together a pilot scheme to print those copies of the Herald-Sun currently airfreighted from Melbourne on a Kodak inkjet web in Brisbane - and learn more about the technology in the process - but the plan is on the backburner following head office demands for a more convincing business case.

Now APN News & Media looks likely to be the first Australian newspaper group to install a digital newspaper printing system, with the principal contractor again expected to be Kodak, a company where the willingness to do business is palpable following the arrival of chief executive Jeff Clarke. The group tested the water with two trials - one in Mackay and another in Warwick - printed by a Gold Coast contractor, and in September launched the concept of personalised editorial and advertising content under the Brand Extra name. At a function at Pier One in Sydney, Bryce Johns, editorial director of the group's Australian Regional Media business, told advertisers it had "found a way' to give consumers exactly what they want in their letterboxes through the personalised Brand Extra insert product.

Johns told the gathering that being a regional publisher with smaller circulation sizes made the "nirvana" easier to accomplish.

It's a big ask, and one which only a handful of individual publishers have managed worldwide; most digitally-printed newspapers are produced on equipment run by distributors or contract printers. Earlier this year, Kodak even partnered a newspaper publisher in a project where a new joint venture will equip and print its daily title in Jersey, together with the range of UK dailies bought in the Channel Islands market.

To fully exploit the technology in a market such as Australia and achieve the savings they promise, inkjet-equipped plants - typically in remote city locations - would need to print the newspapers of two or more publishers.

Now there's something to get Michael Miller and his counterparts talking.

Peter Coleman

Pictured: Former APN chief executive Michael Miller is now executive chairman of News Corp Australia

On our homepage: APN's Yandina print site, where a number of the group's Australian dailies are produced, is a potential location for an inkjet web press