Since the day its presses went live in 2008, contract printing has been a central part of News UK’s strategy to recoup it’s £600m investment in its subsidiary Newsprinters’ three state-of-the-art printing facilities in Broxbourne, Knowsley and Glasgow.

In fact, the landmark deal with Telegraph Media Group that sees The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph printed alongside News UK’s The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times was signed back in May 2007, a year before the final shift at Newsprinters’ old Wapping site.

Today, 40m of the 60m newspapers that are printed each week in the UK are produced on Newsprinters’ presses and while other publishers have by no means stopped investing in their own print plants – Express Group opened its new £100m facility in Luton in 2011 – News UK’s long-term strategy is to grab an even bigger slice of the pie.

“We have got state-of-the-art print sites and we invest heavily in the quality and service of those and we can offer that level of service to another publisher,” says Hart. “So, if they’re looking at their business models – it’s not a short-term thing by any means – but in the longer term, we are a really good partner to work with on that.

“Ultimately, with the declines that are continuing to happen in print, we [want] to work with partners who may be looking to close some of their print sites and looking for a good service from someone else. Strategically, we want to explore how we can work with them and help make that quite a smooth transition from their own plant.

“Some of the regionals aren’t even on the wholesale supply chain, so how do we help that happen? We want to look at how we bring economies to them, to keep the brands alive and keep the titles out there.”

Hart’s remit covers both print and distribution, where News UK controls the largest newspaper distribution network in Britain and Ireland, including deliveries to wholesalers and 6,000 retailers in London.

“I will be looking at how we can extend some of our distribution solutions outside of purely printing,” she says. “Within Central London areas we go direct to retail and we go direct to consumers through the letterbox, and looking at how we can work with other publishers, to give them that service and grow their business, is going to be key in the short term.

“The distribution side hasn’t been opened up to the industry before, so in terms of going direct to consumers and retail, that’s a very untouched opportunity.”

Greater openness

While predicated by Newsprinters’ success as a contract printer, the decision to open up its enviable distribution network is a step-change in News UK’s strategy towards other publishers and hints at an even more open future. 

“I think that some of the third-party print clients have started to look at their own businesses and whether they need to strip more cost out, which has made News UK look at the whole structure to see if there’s an opportunity there to really change the way they talk to some of these clients and to not purely have just a print relationship,” said Hart.

“What I’m going to be looking at is identifying what is the right business to bring in that will grow with us – where we can extend the services that we offer them and start to map out who those people are that we need to talk to. All the time we’re being contacted by other publishers who want to look at certain things and we’re absolutely involved in looking at that too.

“I want to look not only at the print but how we build those client relationships. We want to extend them into our digital and technology areas for sure; we have got the technology – we haven’t looked so far at offering it to clients [before] but it’s something that we feel we need to do to develop those relationships.”

In many ways this willingness to work with one another and to trust one another is a by-product of the hard times UK newspaper publishers have gone through over the past decade. This has created a need for and an environment in which old adversaries can work together.

“I think in terms of circulation we’re always going to be competitive,” says Hart. “But what News UK did with Telegraph Media Group – with the exposure of the expenses stories – they were exclusive to The Telegraph and they were printing The Times alongside it and none of that fell through. Some of those situations that have happened are breaking down the concerns in terms of confidentiality, which has definitely been one of the challenges.

“We operate already through wholesale for economies of scale and that’s going to have to touch a lot of other areas. I think more and more publishers are going to start to look at the fact that for some of these brands and titles, to continue in existence, will need to change their business models.”

In opening up what was a sizeable yet simple contract printing proposition to include distribution and digital publishing services, News UK is already well on the way to changing its business model in a way that could one day see its operations arm become a truly independent supplier of publishing services.