McPherson Media Group, an independent publishing company that owns 14 newspapers in the Goulburn Valley and Southern Riverina in Victoria, is understood to be in negotiations to buy Australian Community Media’s (ACM) Albury-Wodonga print site.
According to a report in the Australian Financial Review, the buyout would preserve jobs at the plant and further ACM executive chairman Antony Catalano’s plan to streamline the printing and distribution of its newspapers.
The news follows an announcement by ACM on 11 August that it has entered into an agreement with News Corp Australia and Nine Entertainment Group (formerly Fairfax) to utilise the print facilities of these companies.
As a result, ACM confirmed the closure of three of its four print sites – with Canberra and Murray Bridge closing effective 28 August and Ballarat closing effective 2 October – as ACM moves to print its material at Nine’s and News Corp’s facilities.
When this was announced, ACM was still considering the position of its Albury-Wodonga site with no final decision made.
The AFR reported that sources told the publication that McPherson Media has entered due diligence on the site and has notified its Newsprinters print staff of its intentions.
Newsprinters is the commercial printing division of McPherson Media.
The report further mentioned that if the deal with ACM goes through, there could be a number of redundancies at Newsprinters, with employees having all entitlements paid.
ACM executive chairman Antony Catalano recently mentioned, in an article he penned in The Canberra Times, that ACM had revised its newspaper printing operations as a result of the “commercial reality we face today in Australian publishing”.
“At ACM, without these significant changes to our printing operations and operational costs, we will be continually swimming against the tide,” Catalano said in the report.
“[The] reality for publishers like ACM, News Corp and Nine Entertainment Co is that rationalising how we produce and distribute our newspapers helps protect the viability of our core businesses.
“With revenues from printing in decline and the advertising market challenged we can no longer afford to be hamstrung by big, expensive, capital-intensive manufacturing operations. So, these changes are the prudent thing to do. It’s smart business.
“We’ve parked egos at the door and left behind the traditional media rivalry so we can get better, more rational, outcomes around printing and distribution.”
At the time of writing, McPherson Media had not responded to Sprinter’s requests for comment while ACM declined to comment on the alleged deal.
UPDATED 27/08/20: A spokesperson for McPherson Media told Sprinter that the company does not have any comment on the matter at the moment.
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