Johnston Press set to close Peterborough printing facility

The move, which will put 35 jobs under threat, comes just weeks after it was announced that the paper was one of five dailies produced by Johnston Press to become weekly publications, as part of a shake-up of the regional publishing group.

The company said publication of the paper would continue to be carried out at any of its print plants across the UK. Johnston Press has four remaining sites at Sheffield, Portsmouth, Sunderland and Carn, Northern Ireland.

A company spokesman said: "Our other presses have the capacity to take on work from the Peterborough site and in the current climate it is a sensible business decision to look at consolidating our print operations."

The story on the Peterborough Telegraph website said the move followed a review of capacity across the company.

A final decision on the closure is expected at the end of the month.

The proposed closure comes four months after the regional publishing firm announced the closure of its Leeds printing press, with the loss of 25 jobs.

Earlier this year, as part of an overhaul of Johnston Press’ titles, chief executive Ashley Highfield announced that all of the publisher’s 170 titles would be relaunched during the course of 2012 with new websites and iPad editions being created for the larger publications.   

In April, the company recorded a pre-tax loss of £144m for the year ending 31 December 2011, citing a cut in the book value of its newspapers.