Fairfax Media is set to shut down two of its printing facilities in Sydney and Melbourne in June of next year.

Fairfax’s facility in North Richmond is being extended

Production will be transferred from the company’s Chullora and Tullamarine sites to two facilities in North Richmond in Sydney’s north and in Ballarat, west of Melbourne. Fairfax says it hopes the move – which it is calling a decentralisation – will lower production costs by around 60 per cent. Bob Lockley, group director of print and distribution at Fairfax Media, says, “We have reorganised the products within the group in order to optimise our line utilisation.” Fairfax is also set to shake things up in its mailroom, integrating components from the Tullamarine site into its facilities in Canberra, North Richmond and Newcastle in Australia, and at Wellington and Auckland in New Zealand. Conveyor and production systems supplier Ferag will integrate MultiDisc winding systems and MSD MultiSertDrum inserting drums at their new locations. Ferag says the equipment will give the sites greater flexibility and enable them to cope with higher production volumes and tight deadlines. It adds that the integration has already begun, working without interruptions to production.

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