News Corp to close Murarrie print centre, with job losses to follow
News Corp will close its Brisbane print centre in Murarrie in favour of maintaining its operations on the Sunshine Coast’s Yandina.
The publisher said the consolidation would take effect from April next year, and would be accompanied by some job losses.
News Corp’s need for print facilities has declined
News Corp announced its review into its print operations in Queensland last month, citing its move to digital-only for its regional and community mastheads.
The Murrarie facility was purpose built for news as a tenant. I’m struggling to work out what they can repurpose It for apart from print style paper flow -maybe they can do jam labels or advert sheets?
News would probably destroy the printers before selling to anyone else in the business
News could move some of that gear to Yandina? There is room.
The rest can be written off and dismantled.
As for the facility, pretty sure are people who can re-purpose a building in exchange for AUD.
Just a thought.
They’re closing the facility. As a tenant with a lease contract, they will either complete the lease and just mothball the facility and move/sell/relocate the assets over time, or alternatively agree to a financial arrangement to cease the lease prior and/or agree to a make good on the site.
Even though over recent years it’s all been doom and gloom concerning revenue News Corp isn’t scratching for cash, they have semi-trailer loads of the stuff in reserve.
ACM sweeping in and taking this over? I still wouldn’t rule out a deal from happening.
This announcement is very instructive for am number of reasons. First, if they can print all these publications at Yandina which was built for the
Sunshine Coast Daily group it says a lot about the huge falls in circulations of all those papers. (Remember when the C-M was selling well over 270k papers each day and the Sunday Mail had an eye-watering 600-k plus). Sales have gone down the plunger. Advertisers are aware of this. Second, Murrarie is really not that long in the tooth. But News Corp will be able to write off its closure as a tax deduction against future profits—that’s if it makes any profits out of its digital gambles. It will also be able to offset some of these costs against the declining fortunes of its 65 percent interest in Foxtel.
Yandina is under Regional Daily’s Award so the wages will be cheaper…