Four ACM print newspapers are to close and more are under threat with the closure of the regional print site that produces them.

ABC South West has reported that Australian Community Media is to close its Bunbury Mail and three other newspapers “by the end of next month unless a buyer is found”, claiming they are not financially viable.

Affected are former Fairfax Media titles the Mandurah Mail, the Augusta-Margaret River Mail, the Bunbury Mail and the Busselton-Dunsborough Mail.

Additionally, the former Fairfax print site at Mandurah – now owned by commercial printer Ive Group – is set to close by May 19.

In a letter to customers, Ive has blamed the closure on a “recent decision by a key client to transition to a digital-only products”. The ABC quotes Andrew St John of independent the Toodyay Herald which prints at Mandurah, saying the closure had come as a shock. “It's a big surprise and a big potential blow to us, so we are meeting urgently to find out whether we can find an alternative press to print on," he told the broadcaster.

In a statement, ACM said it “had no choice but to consider options in the face of a number of challenges faced by the company and the media industry more broadly, which have been exacerbated by the 80 per cent increase to newsprint costs, which are well publicised”.

All the jobs at the four WA titles would go.

The ABC quoted Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance WA director Tiffany Venning that the decreasing amount of information available to people outside metropolitan areas “was concerning”.

“It is just a really sad situation for the communities that these papers cover,” she said. “It’s one less voice – stories will go untold.”

She criticised handling of the previous government’s $50 million public interest news gathering fund which had aimed to support production and distribution of public interest journalism, but said the cash was “not enough” and was not properly distributed.

“There didn't seem to be a lot of transparency and accountability that the money was actually being spent on journalists and journalism to continue to provide those communities with news and information about themselves,” she said.

Both the newspapers and the Mandurah print site – which included a heatset facility – had belonged to Fairfax Media until its sale to Nine Entertainment, when both were offloaded to Antony Catalano and Alex Waislitz’s ACM.

Seven West Media’s West Australian Newspapers – with two presslines in Perth – is now the biggest remaining newspaper printer able to service the WA market.

Recently when ACM unloaded 14 South Australia and Queensland mastheads to Melbourne-headquartered Star News Group, no mention was made of the WA titles.

ACM said at the time it was unloading mastheads “outside its key markets of NSW, the ACT, Victoria and Tasmania”.

Pictured: The Mandurah Mail; manroland Uniset heatset press units are lowered into the Mandurah pressroom in 2011. The site has a single-width Uniset 75 press with a Megtec dryer, of six towers and two folders. It had also been printing the WA edition of Nine daily the Australian Financial Review.