Copies of News Limited’s national broadsheet, ‘The Australian’ are to be printed digitally in the UK under a new agreement with Océ digital newspaper network site Stroma.

The ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ is an established user of the Stroma facility in Southall, in West London, which uses Océ's VarioStream continuous feed (webfed) presses.

UK readers will see ‘The Australian’ up to six hours before it is available in Australia, with copies made available to passengers on board Qantas flights returning to Australia.

Océ is celebrating the production of 20 million digital newspapers worldwide, a quarter of which have been printed at Stroma. The Océ network has six production sites – at Singapore, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney and Merenschwand in Switzerland – and ‘The Australian’ joins 15 other titles produced digitally including ‘The Guardian’ (London), the ‘New York Times’ and the Toronto ‘Globe and Mail’.

Stroma managing director Steve Brown says the company is to be a pioneer of the network which now prints 75 titles worldwide: “Everybody knows there are challenging times in the newspaper market, but companies such as News know that producing newspapers digitally opens up other potential revenue streams.”

Océ digital newspaper specialist Paul Krisson says he believed successful production of the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ in London spurred on News Limited.

“Now passengers in business and first class will have the luxury of reading tomorrow’s newspapers today when they fly back to Australia on Qantas flights. This is another significant step forward for us, with more than 80 per cent of the world’s contracted digital newspaper production running on our equipment.”