Bid to print morning newspapers in the Hebrides 22/2/14
Proposals to print daily newspapers on islands to be on sale in shops by breakfasttime have been rejected.
National papers do not arrive on the islands until the afternoon after rising costs forced the Scottish Newspaper Society (SNS) distribution committee to cancel the regular 8am plane charter from Aberdeen to Stornoway.
The distribution committee says the costs for the proposed alternative of locally printed papers are too expensive and the idea wouldn’t work in practice.
However, the entrepreneurs behind the idea to eliminate the significant delivery delays by digitally printing the national papers locally are not giving up on their plans.
Lewis Printers, a new firm set up to develop the idea, intends to lodge revised proposals to the newspaper companies.
Printing well-known newspapers remotely from their own printing presses is well established.
Foreign papers such as the New York Times, Times of India and China Daily as well
as the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian are printed every day in London for
sale across the UK.
Digital copies of the pages whizz across the globe via the internet and are transferred
into a computer-linked digital press at a location near the reader.
The same sort of system for the Western Isles would get papers rolling off the press and into Lewis newsagents by around 7am. Papers could arrive in Uist about 10.30am.
However, the very small runs is a very expensive way of producing newspapers and the cover price would soar unless the publishers subsidised the costs.
Spokesman David Macdonald highlighted the plan was sell at mainland newspaper prices.
He said: “We have a solution on the table” with a revised proposal to reduce the costs.
Mr Macdonald said: “We feel we are not to far away on cost. They should also look at the impact on the community as well.
He pointed out the afternoon ferry distribution route means islanders have the “worst newspaper service in the UK.”
None jobs could be created if the proposal went ahead while avoiding the wastage
of ferry-delayed dumped newspapers.
However, the publishers believe the idea seems simple in theory but would be very difficult to turn into reality.
Scott McCulloch of the newspaper distribution committee said: “We have been approached by Lewis Printers which have two proposals and both have been rejected on various grounds.”
Mr McCulloch said they were continuing to look into getting papers to the islands earlier by “improvement of the ferry network.”
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