Polestar loses contracts in N&S rejig

Polestar has lost a number of Northern & Shell (N&S) publications after a rejig of the publisher's contracts.

N&S has moved the printing of four of the Express Newspaper magazine supplements from Polestar Varnicoat to Roto Smeets.

Polestar is to begin consultation with its workforce at Varnicoat today (19 October) over plans to reduce capacity at the Pershore gravure factory.

Additionally, PrintWeek understands that as part of the review New! and Star will move from Polestar to BGP.

A five-year contract to print the Express Newspaper supplements at Roto Smeets' Deventeer, Etten-Leur and Weert plants will begin in January 2011.

A statement from Roto Smeets said: "This is an important contract win for Roto Smeets and represents major addition to the company's portfolio of weekly magazines produced for publishers across north-western Europe."

The contract loss is likely to mark the beginning of the end for Varnicoat, the former Watmoughs factory that is the last bastion of the group's old-style gravure plants in the UK.

Polestar chief executive Barry Hibbert said: "There is a huge price war going on in mainland Europe and as a result some contracts have become uneconomical for us to produce.

"We don’t want to keep volume for volume’s sake, and this is an example. We’ve been printing for the Express for 20 years, and we wish Northern & Shell well with their new arrangements."

N&S has invested in a spate of KBA presses for a new facility to be built somewhere north of London. There are future plans to alter the presses to heat-set/cold-set machines.

When it announced the investment, N&S said that the new plant would eventually house presses capable of producing its magazines, including OK!, New and Star in-house.

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