The tabloid-format Weekend supplement is inserted with the Daily Mail on Saturday, which has sales of some 1.43m copies a week.
Sources told Printweek that production had started at DMG’s Harmsworth Printing plant in Thurrock today (4 April) on its coldset flexo newspaper presses.
There had been speculation that DMG could opt for a heatset cover to give the title a more glossy feel, but Printweek understands it will be a self-cover product, at least initially.
Thurrock has been installing additional trimming and inserting equipment from Ferag and Gammerler in recent months to support the move.
An industry expert commented: “For them to do that size product, and trim it and insert is quite a complex thing.
“Flexo printing makes the Weekend supplement paper curl and they’ve been working with Sun Chemical on the ink formulation.”
Printweek understands that the Mail on Sunday’s You magazine is being printed at Walstead Bicester, again it’s not clear if this is an interim or permanent solution.
The Mail on Sunday has an ABC of 767,756 copies a week.
Customers are scrambling to place their jobs at printers in the UK and on the continent since administrators were appointed at YM's three web division factories last week.
Bauer Media is understood to have shifted production of flagship weekly TV Choice to its own printing facility in Poland, with inserts having to be shipped to Poland as a result.
Aside from the time-sensitive publications previously printed at YM sites, the other huge question mark is over the commercial work such as catalogues and retail flyers previously printed at YM.
YM was the dominant player in short-grain printing in the UK.
“Around 70% of the commercial work printed at York Mailing and Scarborough was short-grain, and nobody else can do those formats in the UK,” an informed source noted.
Prinovis in Liverpool can print short-grain products on its gravure presses, if the volumes make sense for gravure printing and suitable paper is available.
Walstead Group has a short-grain 32pp Lithoman at its Peterborough operation.
DMG Media and Bauer Media had not commented on their long-term plans at the time of writing.
“There are a lot of moving parts at the moment. One thing's for sure, there is more work than capacity at this moment in time. Customers are going to have to get their heads around the fact that it's a whole new world in terms of web offset purchasing and capacity.”
