THE Cork Examiner group is understood to be negotiating with News International to print copies of its titles the Sunday Times and the Times at its Cork plant. The contract could be worth at least £15,000 a week, or £750,000 a year, to the Examiner, according to industry sources.
Sources say the deal would involve printing two sections of the Sunday newspaper - the sports/ business section and the front section, every Saturday night. Estimates for the daily edition, vary from 4,500 to 10,000 copies a day.
"The move would make sense as it would lower News International's high transport costs for both newspapers," said one source.
Mr Alan Crosbie, a director of Thomas Crosbie & Company (Holdings) Ltd, the company which owns the Cork Examiner said he wasn't in a position to confirm or deny whether the company was negotiating with News International.
The Sunday Times has been pushing aggressively for market share in Ireland over the last few years and now claims to be the second largest selling Sunday newspaper here, selling 100,000 copies each week. The Times is selling more than 3,000 copies a day.
In January, News International took a long term lease on offices in Huguenot House on St Stephen's Green, Dublin to house journalistic and other staff for the group's main papers - the Sunday Times, the Times, the Sun and the News of the World. News International said then that the offices would provide "abundant room" for expanding its journalistic activities here.
Owners of British papers are understood to be in discussions with several Irish newspaper publishers about the possibility of entering contracts for printing Irish editions here.
The Cork Examiner is shortly to change its name to the Examiner and make a push for sales outside its traditional Munster base. In common with other newspapers, it has benefited from the demise of the Irish Press titles, gaining around 3.4 per cent circulation. Its current daily circulation is about 54,000 copies. Thomas Crosbie & Company made a profit of £324,000 last year while Cork Examiner Publications which publishes the Cork Examiner and the Evening Echo made a pretax profit of £345,000 on a turnover of £20 million.
