Murdoch opens world's biggest printing plant
A printing plant being billed as the world's largest is now in operation cranking out newspapers for Rupert Murdoch's News International - a vote of confidence in Britain's troubled newspaper industry.
The plant in Broxbourne, 32 kilometers north of London, will be used to print the company's four British papers, including two racy tabloids, the Sun and the News of the World, and the more sober-minded Times and Sunday Times.
The new plant is already in use and should be fully operational by the end of next month. It represents the final phase in a 650-million-pound investment in three state-of-the-art printing plants. It houses 12 presses capable of producing more than 1 million full color newspapers per hour on a site big enough to house 23 soccer fields.
"This new Broxbourne facility represents an enormous advance in our capabilities," James Murdoch, chairman of News Corp Europe and Asia, said.
"Our investment should be ample answer to those who believe the business of journalism, in print, is a business for yesterday's readers, not tomorrow's."
Joe Urschel, executive director of the Newseum newspaper museum in Washington, DC, said he had never heard of a facility capable of producing so many papers so quickly.
News International spokeswoman Daisy Dunlop said the press was the largest in the world in terms of the number of newspapers that could be produced there.
"We have been running live trials since before the end of last year and the Sun and News of the World started there in January, with the Times and Sunday Times set for full production at the end of next month," she said.
"It's been a soft launch," remarked Dunlop.
Agencies
(China Daily 03/19/2008 page17)
