The West to rent its hybrid home after $75 million sale

May 13, 2020 at 07:34 pm by Staff


Seven West Media will lease the Osborne Park, Perth, home of its West Australian Newspapers in a $75 million deal with a special purpose property trust.

The cash-strapped media company announced the sale just two weeks after finally closing the sale of its Pacific Magazines division to Bauer Media.

The buyer, the special purpose Primewest Media Trust - managed by Primewest Management - is leasing the property back to SWM for 15 years.

The building - home of the daily West Australian and Sunday Times mastheads and Seven's TVW7 Perth studios - accommodates the group's large hybrid press and mailroom system, installed in 2008 as part of a $210 million production upgrade. The installation includes integrated six-folder double and single-width KBA Colora and Comet presses - the latter including two heatset towers - and a three-drum Ferag inserting system.

It is the biggest and most flexible press facility in Western Australia, producing at its peak, products of more than 700 tabloid pages and a circulation of 385,000 at weekends - and other work including glossy magazines. News' Perth Print closed following its 2016 sale of the Sunday Times to SWM. Another major WA print facility is at Australian Community Media's former Fairfax plant in Mandurah.

SWM was reported to have debt of $541.5 million before the PacMags sale was completed at the beginning of this month, a deal under which Seven will receive advertising worth $6.6 million in advertising over three years.

Pictured (top): part of West Australian Newspapers' hybrid KBA press; (above) the integrated broadcast, web and print newsroom at Osborne Park

Sections: Print business

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