Independent News & Media's is to invest €10 million as part of a major expansion at its printing press in Newry, Co Down, the company said today.
The announcement was made by IN&M chief executive Sir Anthony O'Reilly at the US/Northern Ireland Investment Conference at Stormont this afternoon.
The €20 million 60,000 sq ft facility, which is based in Newry's Carnbane Industrial Estate, opened last April with the creation of 40 jobs.
Sir Anthony said that the expansion would cater for the production of high quality glossy magazines of up to 120 pages in size in one pass.
The plan involves the building of two additional high speed towers, one for the cold set press and one for the heat set press, to enable the production of daily newspapers.
Sir Anthony also used his address at the conference to signal a clear need for the transfer of some fiscal autonomy to Northern Ireland as a means of attracting more inward investment.
"I and many others (including all the political parties) have argued, Northern Ireland, as it enters a new political era and seeks to make up for lost opportunity, should be allowed to open wide the economic throttle. The business tax battle must therefore be won and I hope that a flow of new investors will help us to win it. We must achieve quickly a situation where investors are delighted not only with their pre-tax profits but with their after-tax profits as well," he said
"A level playing field on corporation tax would give Northern Ireland a real chance to replicate the Republic's economic success where per capita income is one-third higher than Northern Ireland - which is its very proper ambition - and it would mark a big advance towards the exciting vision of a genuinely island economy that is location indifferent so far as inward investment is concerned," he added
