The closures, in Nova Scotia and Montréal, will take place by the end of June and result in the layoff of some 500 employees.
"The Dartmouth Quad plant (in Nova Scotia) specialized in retail flyer printing - this is the only printing they did," a spokeswoman for Transcontinental told PrintWeek.
"They ran one web press only - a 54" Harris four-unit. At this point, we have no plan to move this equipment to another facility."
She added the Rivières-des-Prairies plant in Montréal is 40% commercial and 60% retail printing. It has mainly Sunday web presses like 3000, 2000 and 1000 and once again no equipment is being moved to other plants in the near future.
The company said in a statement that the remaining four plants acquired in the deal would be integrated into the Transcontinental network in order to maximize the use of each piece of equipment.
In addition, the Quad Graphics Toronto Que-Net Media premedia center will also be integrated into Transcontinental’s premedia operations and moved to Mississauga, Ontario.
Transcontinental acquired all of Quad/Graphics' Canadian operations outside Vancouver in exchange for giving Quad/Graphics its Mexican operations and export-oriented black-and-white book-publishing business. The six plants and one premedia facility had earlier belonged to Quebecor World and employed about 1,500 people.
In a statement, President/CEO François Olivier, said, "We have difficult choices to make, but are convinced that this is the best strategy for strengthening Transcontinental’s base and protecting jobs in order to remain strong in a Canadian industry that is experiencing tough competition."
The company noted said that the closures mark the start of its multi-phase integration, which will take place over the coming months in order to improve Transcontinental’s capacity utilization ratio and make full use of the $700m invested in its print network over the past several years. It reiterated that the Quad/Graphics assets could lead to up to $230m in new business revenues over the next two years.
