O'Reilly announces €10m investment in IN&M print centre

5/8/2008 - 4:37:02 PM

Independent News & Media's Newry print centre is to benefit from an additional £7m (€10m) investment for further expansion and the purchase of two high speed print towers, it was announced today.

Anthony O'Reilly, chief executive of Independent News & Media PLC made the announcement during a speech given in Parliament Buildings, Stormont at the US/Northern Ireland Investment Conference today.

Exactly one year ago, INM opened the state-of-the art print facility in Newry's Carnbane Industrial Estate.

"I am delighted to announce today a further £7m (€10m) investment in Newry to purchase two additional high speed towers, one for each press, another global first for Newry," said O'Reilly.

"This additional investment further underlines IN&M's total commitment to Northern Ireland and total confidence in its ability to host large infrastructural projects alongside a well qualified workforce to make it a success."

Whilst announcing INM's further commitment to the Northern Ireland, O'Reilly also offered encouragement to other potential investors.

"In the Executive we have a very strong ministerial team," he said. "Investors will be impressed by that and by the way they are so sharply focussed on creating an increasingly vibrant economy. This is a very competitive location where companies can make good profits."

O'Reilly also signalled a clear need for the transfer of some fiscal autonomy to the North as a means of attracting more inward investment.

"I and many others (including all the political parties) have argued, Northern Ireland, as it enters a new political era and seeks to make up for lost opportunity, should be allowed to open wide the economic throttle," he said.

"The business tax battle must therefore be won and I hope that a flow of new investors will help us to win it. We must achieve quickly a situation where investors are delighted not only with their pre-tax profits but with their after-tax profits as well."

"A level playing field on corporation tax would give Northern Ireland a real chance to replicate the Republic's economic success where per capita income is one-third higher than Northern Ireland - which is its very proper ambition - and it would mark a big advance towards the exciting vision of a genuinely island economy that is location indifferent so far as inward investment is concerned."