Fairfax to close two NZ presses and give print contract to APN
Fairfax Media titles in the upper North Island in New Zealand will now be printed by rival publisher APN News & Media in a deal announced to the ASX this morning.
Following staff consultations the move will see Fairfax Media’s Auckland and Hamilton sites close within three months.
From August, Fairfax’s Waikato Times, Sunday Star-Times, Sunday News and other community titles will be printed at APN’s Ellerslie print works.
Fairfax’s now empty Chullora printworks
The closure of the New Zealand printworks is a similar strategy to the one followed by Fairfax Media in Australia which has seen the closure of its print works in Chullora in NSW and Tullamarine in Victoria. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age are now printed by the company’s Rural Press subsidiary.
Fairfax Media CEO Greg Hywood said of the APN deal: “This new arrangement makes absolute sense for Fairfax in New Zealand. Sharing a print site with a competitor is fairly common practice in overseas markets. In this instance we boost our print capability in the upper North Island market without the need for significant capital investment and gain significant benefits from the additional scale and efficiencies.”
APN CEO Michael Miller said: “Our conversations with Fairfax have been very positive and reflect similar optimism for the ongoing viability of printed newspapers, which continue to play a vital role in the communities they reach.”
“The arrangement with Fairfax allows APN to utilise spare capacity at our state-of-the-art Ellerslie facility.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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News just in:
“Fairfax Board stumbles around blindly in the dark”
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News just in:
“Fairfax is having to adapt because less people are buying print”
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Hey Fairfax just rip the band aid off already…
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Alms for the blind?
Alms, alms, alms for the blind? Anyone?
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Real question: would Fairfax survive without government advertising?
There seems to be a ton of it, along with massive freebies like Rudd’s pre-election boat people spend. Is government locked into traditional spending models that are entirely out of date?
Put another way, are these dinosaurs clinging on because of taxpayer funded welfare?
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A great lesson in spin here. Closing down your own presses, writing off multi-million dollar investments and going cap in hand to the opposition “makes absolute sense”. Yeah, right Greg. It’s just as well this is an industry website because if this story had appeared in the Telegraph or on 2GB the ridicule and guffawing would have been deafening.
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Here’s a curious thing. If this had happened a decade ago, New Zealand’s Commerce Commission would have quickly moved in on the two companies for ‘anti-competitive behaviour’. It’s just as anti-competitive today, but also a matter of survival. Do the competition goal posts move when an industry is in a downward spiral?
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Forget all the justification talk. It is obvious what is going on. Fairfax are committing suicide. Please stand aside.
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I am keen to know if there are certain agreements in place re government advertising. I too see it everywhere in print, yet I do not buy anything in print and have just asked my colleagues (approx 20) who do not either..?? Surely digital is the first place you look to saturate, ahead of print and not the other way around?
Does anyone have clarification? I have a niggle that there is legislation in place the government must advertise in print – surely not?!
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