The publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday already has planning permission for the project from South Oxfordshire District Council, and plans for the plant to come onstream in 2008.

Peter Williams, DMGT finance director, said that the new plant would run flexo presses, but gave no further details of the supplier.

DMGT uses KBA Flexocourier presses at its London plant Harmsworth Quays. Williams also revealed that the site's eight Flexocourier presses would be upgraded to print full-colour by 2008.

Harmsworth Quays, the world's biggest flexo print plant, recently completed a 165m overhaul to allow it to print the UK's most colour-heavy national newspapers a 128pp Daily Mail with 64pp colour, and a 168pp Mail on Sunday with 128pp colour.

As revealed by PrintWeek, DMGT's regional newspaper arm Northcliffe Newspaper Group (NNG) is also spending 50m on a print plant in north Lincolnshire, which will replace plants in Lincoln, Hull and Grimsby.

The news came as DMGT's national newspaper arm, Associated Newspapers, posted a 3.5% year-on-year drop in operating profits to 48.5m for the half-year ending 3 April 2005.

The publisher blamed increasing newsprint prices for the drop in profits, which were achieved on turnover up 1% to 458m.
NNG revealed that operating profit edged up 100,000 to 46.7m year-on-year, with turnover flat at 257m.

Story by Josh Brooks