Mark White, manager of foreign sales, said: "Distribution costs are constantly going up and there are a range of taxes you have to add on to that. Digital print has progressed in the past few years and colour has come a long way.

"The time will soon come though where publishers sit down with printers and manufacturers to have the conversation. Colour is now nearly on a par with mono in terms of cost so it's time to pass some of that money back to us."

White was speaking at the live public unveiling of colour newspaper production at west London-based digital newspaper printer Stroma, which has just added an extra 45 titles to its print portfolio.

Stroma, which has been printing newspapers using digital print technology since 2001, has tied with Belgian digital print business Newspaper Abroad to ramp up the number of daily titles it can produce.

Steve Brown, managing director of Stroma, said the agreement was an important step forward for digital colour production of newspapers in London.

"These international newspapers can be produced within 20 minutes of editorial shutdown in their home markets, thanks to technology that means the files are transferred by PDF over the internet," he added.

Stroma's move into digital colour newspaper production came as the result of a £1.3m investment in an Océ JetStream 1000 and a Hunkeler reel-to-reel line and two Hunkeler offline finishing lines in March.