DMGT plans to move printing plant

Daily Mail owner has not ruled out redundancies if move from Surrey Quays to 50m site in Essex goes ahead

Daily Mail & General Trust plans to move its printing operation from east London to a new 50m development in Essex, it announced today.

The Daily Mail owner has started a consultation with its 157 employees at Surrey Quays who will be affected by the move. The company has not ruled out some redundancies.

The announcement by DMGT comes days after it emerged Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell, whose titles include the Daily Star and OK! magazine, has submitted plans for new printing presses at a site in Luton which could also accommodate up to 1,000 editorial staff.

Northern & Shell is currently based in London and its titles are printed at Westferry in London's Docklands.

Harmsworth Printing, the DMGT subsidiary which prints the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, has been located at Surrey Quays in south London since 1989. The company wants to move to a new greenfield site in Thurrock, Essex, close to the Kent border.

Under the plan put forward by A&N Media, DMGT's consumer media division, the move from London would take place over three and a half years. It will invest between 45m and 50m in the Thurrock site over a four-year period.

DMGT's current 11-acre print site in Surrey Quays would need to be upgraded at an estimated cost of between 10m and 15m if it decided to say, the company said.

"We are constantly searching for ways to produce our copies more efficiently," said a spokesman. "The plan to move to T! hurrock is part of this process and it is expected to deliver significant savings once implemented".

The new site will have the capacity to print full colour versions of the 128-page Daily Mail and 160-page Mail on Sunday.

Like other newspaper publishers, including News International and Express Newspapers, DMGT has watched as the former industrial areas which housed printing plants were transformed by the arrival of expensive flats and offices.

That has made road access more difficult in some cases, while land values have risen significantly in the East End, making the prospect of selling sites more compelling.

Rupert Murdoch's News International moved its printing operation from its former location in Wapping, east London, its home since 1986, to Broxbourne, Hertfordshire three years ago.

DMGT holds a long-term lease of the Surrey Quays site, which is owned by Southwark council and designated for printing facilities for planning purposes.

DMGT will market the location and "talk with interested parties about its future usage", the company said in a statement.

Richard Desmond is also finalising plans to move out of London and has submitted a detailed planning application for new facilities in Luton.

In an email to staff this week, Express Newspapers managing director Ian Parrott said "no decision has been made" on wether to relocate journalists to Luton.

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"Ther e has been some speculation recently about a possible move to Luton after comments were made by the local MP," Parrott wrote. "I can confirm that the new print centre will indeed be moving there and that planning permission has been granted at the site".

He added: "No decision has been made and nothing has been decided about the editorial operation that is currently based at Lower Thames Street .

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