Stop press: End of ‘golden age’ as News Corp puts Murarrie up for auction
Media company News Corp is selling off its former printing headquarters at Murarrie, one of the most visible signs that the golden age of newspaper publishing has come to an end.
Opened with much fanfare in 1995 after seven years of planning and boasting four giant state-of-the-art presses imported from Germany, the site was capable of producing 80,000 newspapers an hour in its heyday.
Employing about 400 staff and regarded as one of the company’s most attractive assets, it had pride of place in a prominent position on Lytton Rd, close to the Gateway Motorway to allow rapid delivery of its publications across the southeast Queensland and elsewhere in the state.
However, the site is now being offered up as a “vacant possession” property, with agents Jones Lang LaSalle handling the sale.
News Corp announced it would move much its printing operations to Yandina on the Sunshine Coast in 2020 when it shut down many of its regional and community newspapers, switching them to digital-only editions.
Many of these titles have since been absorbed into The Courier-Mail website.
At the time of the move, the company’s Marcus Hooke said News had to “consolidate operations due to the excess production capacity”.
An ad in The Courier-Mail’s commercial property section on Friday described the former printing HQ as a “freestanding office/warehouse” with “significant embedded infrastructure including large power supply and climate controlled warehousing”.