When a storm shut down power to the whole of South Australia yesterday evening, it was home delivery readers that had to wait for their daily copy of The Advertiser.
With no generators at its Mile End, Adelaide print site, print production was switched to News' Melbourne site, with enough copies back in the city for deliveries by 9am. Marketing and circulation director Dan Demaria (pictured) said that regional and home delivery readers would have to wait for their copies. There had not been time to deliver to country customers, and the inability to flatwrap in Melbourne meant home delivery customers also went without: "Depending when power is restored to the Adelaide Print Centre, we will endeavour to then start the presses to print home delivery newspapers and deliver these throughout Thursday," he said.
Flatwrapping in Adelaide was part of an $8 million upgrade in 2011 under then managing director of Advertiser Newspapers Michael Miller (now News executive chairman after a stint at APN), but the Melbourne print site lacks similar equipment.
But the eight-hour truck journey from Melbourne to Adelaide (730 kms) is something to which News logistics staff are accustomed; it's less than half the 1500 kms News routinely trucks its Alice Springs paper, the Centralian Advocate from Darwin.
The Adelaide newsroom and adelaide.now.com.au website were still in operation thanks to a back-up generator.
The state government said the storm event damaged power infrastructure near Port Augusta, causing the entire South Australia power network to shut down "to protect itself". Power went down in the city at about 4pm.