Nine years into its second century. Tasmania's Circular Head Chronicle has made a fundamental change to its production... outsourced web-offset printing.

But for readers, the biggest news may be that the local rag - which has been printed sheetfed on relatively flame-resistant glossy paper in recent years - will once again be usable as a fire-starter.

From this week, the Smithton-based newspaper - which was a 2008 PANPA award winner - is being printed at Fairfax Media's Examiner print site in Launceston, and moves to a traditional tabloid format.

General manager Michael Gates says there a number of benefits come with the change - more colour content, lower costs for advertisers, and the availability of more capacity for local and interstate customers of its Print Domain business. It will have no direct influence on local jobs.

Printing sheetfed offset on the company's Shinohara five-colour and single-colour sheetfed presses was becoming increasingly expensive, especially with the impact of lower exchange rates. "Moving the newspaper printing will help us concentrate on bringing new work into our Smithton operation," Gates says. "Printing the Chronicle often ties up a valuable day in our production schedule."

Fairfax prints a variety of its own and contract publications - including the Examiner and Burnie Advocate - on the Goss Community in Launceston.

Chronicle managing director Craig Saward says the company had to find an alternative to increasing prices to readers and advertisers. Instead it will offer a 27 per cent discount on minimum available display spaces as part of a move to a new modular advertising system.

The company has two print sites in Tasmania and another on the Gold Coast, using digital and offset equipment and the old Heidelberg flatbed on which the paper was once printed. It was established in Stanley in 1906 and moved to Smithton in 1952.

Picture Circular Head Chronicle/Bodey Dittlof