An act of faith underpins Le Télégramme’s decision to invest 20 million Euro (A$32.9 million) in production, buying a new double-width press to produce the French regional daily, when elsewhere, others are scrapping equipment and moving out of print.

But it is not one that has been taken lightly.

“All print newspapers are decreasing in circulation, all over the world and France is no different,” technical director Olivier Berthelot tells me, “but not all are falling at the same rate. And not all have the same strategy.”

With circulation being lost at between four and five per cent a year, the paper is better placed than national newspapers, thanks to its commitment to quality local content.

“We need to remain optimistic about the future, but not be satisfied with measures that are reduced to stopping our presses to reduce costs, which are increasing in the face of the drop in circulation.

“Indeed, by stopping one of our existing Wifag presses, we would no longer have had the means to print all of our 19 daily editions and for a print run of between 150,000 and 180,000 copies per night. With such a plan, we would have been faced with an acceleration of our ‘print’ decline, which would have led to a rapid increase in the cover price of the newspaper, a drop in pagination, with a deterioration in editorial quality: fewer editions and therefore fewer local pages, but for a higher cover price.”

He noted that with cover prices reaching three euros (4.94 Australian dollars), some national papers have seen readers cutting back to one copy a week, or completely abandoning the paper reading in favour of e-readers and smartphones.

What’s noticeable at Le Télégramme is the commitment to content, with a substantial editorial staff and a four million Euros renovation of its premises in 2018 including installation of EidosMedia’s Méthode content management system.

The family-owned newspaper wanted to maintain its current 19 local editions, a contrast to newspapers that reduce editions to cut costs. “You can (lose circulation) slowly or quickly, depending upon what you do,” Berthelot said.

He joined the group seven years ago from robotics experience with car-maker Citroën and 24 years with neighbouring regional Ouest-France.

“One of the first things I learned was that we could not continue to produce the paper with the equipment we had, two Wifag OF371 presses, and in the context of the decline in our circulation, as the production costs were increasing every day,” he says.

“Either we upgraded the presses – which dated from 1996 and had no automatic reel loading, closed-loop ink density and dampening, no automatic plate calibration; or we needed to look at a new investment.”

For Olivier Berthelot, faced with the increase in production costs, upgrading the existing machines merely meant putting off the day "when we had to stop one of the two Wifags. So we would have found ourselves at the same starting point, and in these conditions how could we maintain our 19 editions,” he asked.

Post-COVID and with the start of the Ukraine war, there was the added complication of a huge increase in the cost of energy and paper.

Options considered included extending print times – with an earlier start and later finish – but this proved impracticable for the high edition count. One possibility was to replace one of the Wifags with a new press, but “taking care of the obsolescence” was costly and complicated by the exit of the Swiss press maker (now Polytype) from the market, and the reduced involvement of the maker of its press controls.

“The target of M. Coudurier (president of the Télégramme Group) was to stay with same number of editions, our hyperlocal status and ability to talk about what is happening in each village being a big differentiating factor,” he says.

Production times were another major factor: for the editorial staff, it was important to keep a start at 11pm to have the freshest possible information in print, or even to be able to start at 11:30pm to have the sports results of the Breton clubs, and to be able to ensure the distribution of the newspaper in the mailboxes before 7am.

With these factors and approval in 2019 for an investment, Olivier Berthelot started to explore the potential of a new press that could “change the model by responding to a medium and long term vision” and to explore scenarios.

“Refresh the old or invest in the latest technology – c’est pas la même chose,” Berthelot tells me.

Proposals were invited from the two German manufacturers remaining in the market – a diminishing field, reduced further during the week before my visit by Mitsubishi’s announcement that it would stop making newspaper presses – for a press to print a 64-page tabloid, in line with an earlier decision to limit the amount of paper used in a year.

What they decided is a pragmatic solution: If you think the newspaper will disappear in perhaps five to seven years, the cheapest solution would have been beast, but with 95 per cent of revenue tied to print, the need is to stay with print as long as possible and the best solution is the one that addresses the long term vision, even though the cost of the latter is, perhaps double.

Olivier Berthelot says options shown included 4x1 format presses, currently popular in France, with its saving in plates, but requiring more towers, and even with higher speed, not having the capacity to produce 19 editions within the accepted time.

An imperative was also the ability to split the edition into sections: a stitched section for general news, a second for local news, and a third for sport, for example. When I had seen Le Télégramme run the previous night, the split was 24 tabloid pages stitched, plus 20 local pages and another four.

“After visiting sites in Europe, we decided the solution was in fact, 4x2 (double-width, double circumference),” he says, “more adapted to our wishes but with some constraints”. One issue journalists have had to come to terms with is apage break of eight pages.

In the end, Berthelot says the more tailor-made solution was that of manroland Goss, and the order for a four-tower, two-folder Colorman e:line – capable of printing two 64-page tabloids simultaneously – was announced in October 2021.

It has the maker’s PECOM controls including ink key positioning SlidePad and tablet-based MobilPad, but importantly inline control closed loop systems covering automatic ink density control and fan-out for quality and waste control, presetting and automatic alignment in the reelstands, and APL automatic plate loading using pivoting robot arms in the print towers. Plus a raft of other automation technology, and a possible cost advantage from some of the systems being sourced from manroland Goss’s subsidiary Grapho Metronic.

Timed with the installation has been faster mailroom equipment, and upgraded prepress using ProImage’s Newsway which drives plate sorting, and Kodak’s Sonora ‘process-free’ plates.

Oliver Berthelot and, we understand, his boss, are well pleased with the outcome, which has seen a reduction in the overall printing team, across prepress, press, mailroom and maintenance, from 72 to 43, with eight currently needed for prepress and printing.

Immediate savings have come from the ability to print the same number of editions and copies with four manrolandGoss towers as had been possible with the previous eight Wifag towers, as well as by stopping staff recruitment and not replacing retirees.

“This mode has also allowed us to halve the number of plates used, as well as the volume of paper waste on press,” he says.

The two Wifag presses – still located on either side of the new Colorman e:line – are idle, added to a collection of print ephemera that includes Linotypes and an old autoplate caster. Valuable only for their hard-to-source components. Their dismantling and removal will of course, cost money.

Of the overall investment, 15 per cent – about three million Euros – would have in any case been needed for renovation of the building, cooling, and roof, “plus obsolescence”.

Looking back on COVID-19 and the energy crisis, it’s clear that had they not moved as they did, they would have been forced to stop one of the Wifag presses and the 19 editions.

“Having a plan, taking a decision was ‘useful’,” he says with modest understatement.

Peter Coleman

Pictured (from top): Olivier Berthelot and the new Morlaix press and prepress facilties

* pas la même chose – “it is not the same thing”