The nine-year-old KBA press at the Gold Coast Bulletin is the latest casualty of industry consolidation in Australia.

From next April, the newspaper and its free distribution stablemate the Gold Coast Sun will be printed at News Corp Australia’s Murarrie, Brisbane, print site, which is currently being upgraded.

The nine-tower KBA Comet press (pictured) went live in 2004 as the centrepiece of a $43 million upgrade of the Molendinar site. The all-colour single-width press is similar to those News has since commissioned in Hobart and Darwin.

But reduced print circulations and the closure of some community titles have resulted in the press being underutilised, and the nearby Murarrie upgrade will make it possible to move production of the Gold Coast daily there.

News is leaving the Molendinar site and offices are currently relocating to a high-profile location in Southport’s 11-floor Seabank tower. Advertising call centre functions have already moved to Brisbane and – with the ‘one newsroom’ approach from country-wide commissioning of the new EidosMedia Méthode system – many editorial roles are in the process of following.

The Molendinar upgrade came at the height of a period of optimism which included the installation of new plant at Fairfax’s Tullamarine (Melbourne) site – currently being dismantled and distributed to regional sites – and Wodonga and Ballarat.

In addition to The Bulletin and the Sun, the plant had been printing Queensland editions of the Sydney Daily Telegraph, as well as a series of community newspapers on the Sunshine Coast including the Noosa Journal, which has since closed.

manroland and QI Press Controls are currently undertaking an upgrade of drive and control equipment on the Newsman presses at Murarrie which – as the last to be installed from News’ 1987 colour press order – are significantly older than the Gold Coast pressline.

The site closure was announced last week by News regional director Jason Scott and is understood to be part of rationalisation put in place by former chief executive Kim Williams. Some 60 jobs are understood to be affected by the latest change with some relocated to Brisbane. Staff numbers at the Gold Coast site are reported to have been cut by more than 400 since 2010.