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| Company type | Private limited company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Media |
| Founded | 1845 |
| Founder | Jacob Henry Tillett, Jeremiah Colman, John and Jonathan Copeman |
| Headquarters | , England, UK |
Key people | Lorna Willis (Chief Executive Officer) |
| Products | Newspapers, magazines |
| Revenue | £87.2 million (2018)[1] |
| £+1.7m (Underlying Profit) £-6.63m (Operating Profit) (2018)[1] | |
| Owner | Gannett |
Number of employees | Approx. 950 |
| Parent | Newsquest |
| Website | www |
Archant Limited is a newspaper and magazine publishing company with headquarters inNorwich, England. The group publishes four daily newspapers, around 50 weekly newspapers, and 80 consumer and contract magazines. The company is a subsidiary ofNewsquest, which is owned by American newspaper publishing companyGannett.
Archant employs around 1,250 employees, mainly inEast Anglia, theHome counties and theWest Country, and was known asEastern Counties Newspapers Group until March 2002.
The company began publishing in Norwich in 1845 withNorfolk News, backed by Jacob Henry Tillet,Jeremiah Colman, John and Johnathan Copeman. The Colman and Copeman families still retain close involvement in the business.
TheEastern Weekly Press was launched in 1867 and in 1870 was renamed theEastern Daily Press. A sister title, theEastern Evening News, was launched in 1882.
As the business grew it moved premises in 1902, 1959 and again in the late 1960s to its present headquarters location at Prospect House in the centre of Norwich.
At the end of the 1960s, Eastern Counties Newspapers merged with the East Anglian Daily Times Company, publisher of theEast Anglian Daily Times, to form Eastern Counties Newspapers Group (ECNG).
ECNG developed further with the launch of Community Media Limited in 1981, a weeklies publishing operation based inBath, which launched and acquired titles inScotland and the West Country.
In 1985, ECNG purchased the East Anglia-basedAdvertiser group of weekly free newspapers. These businesses operated as separate entities until the mid-1990s when they were brought together under the ECNG banner.
ECNG acquired four weekly newspapers inHuntingdon,Ely,Wisbech andMarch from Thomson in 1993. The acquisition of Peterhead-based P Scrogie followed shortly afterwards.
In 1995 the company opened a new 25m Print Center in Thorpe, Norwich, with Goss HT70 Presses and Muller-Martini Mailroom Equipment, Replacing the Goss Metro Presses at Prospect House.
The company moved into Internet publishing in 1996 when it launchedEastern Counties Network, a Web-based service using copy from its four daily newspapers as well as original material. Later this was disaggregated into separate websites for each of the newspapers.
In April 1998, ECNG bought Home Counties Newspapers Holdings plc with an agreed bid of approximately £58 million. The bid earned the company the nickname of "TheNews Corp. of East Anglia". HCNH published a range of 26 weekly paid and free titles acrossGreater London and the Home Counties. The title portfolio included theHampstead & Highgate Express, theSouth Essex Recorder series, theHerts Advertiser series, theComet series, theHerald group and theWelwyn & Hatfield Times.
Consumer magazine publisher Market Link Publishing, nowArchant Specialist, based inEssex was acquired by ECNG for £5 million in autumn 1999. Its titles now includePhotography Monthly,Professional Photographer,Pilot,Sport Diver,Complete France, which sponsors a French forum,French Property News,Living France, andFrance Property Shop. It also sponsorsThe France Show at Olympia andThe French Property Exhibitions in London and Yorkshire.
The launch of a county magazine inNorfolk in 2000 saw the beginning of what is nowArchant Life, the country's biggest publisher of county magazines. The division was subsequently scaled through multiple acquisitions in theNorth West, theCotswolds and theSouth andSouth East of England.
In March 2002, ECNG changed its name to Archant, prompted by the company's broadening geographic scope and growing range of its activities.
In December 2003, Archant purchased 27 weekly newspapers fromIndependent News & Media in two separate deals worth up to £62 million. The titles included theHackney Gazette,Islington Gazette, theEast London Advertiser, theBarking & Dagenham Post, theBexley Times and theBromley Times.[2]
In April 2007, Archant Scotland's eight newspaper titles were sold to Johnston Press for around £11 million.[3]
In February 2008, Archant acquired Compass Magazines and its four monthly regional magazines in Dorset, Hampshire and Surrey.[4]
In September 2009, Archant Print completed an £8 million project to bring its press centre in Norwich up to ten printing towers with associated equipment.
In November 2009, Archant launched Great British Life, a website portal. In the same month, Archant launchedSubscription Save, a dedicated magazine subscriptions portal for their publications.
In May 2010, Archant launchedCambridge First, a weekly newspaper in Cambridge.
In June 2010, Archant acquiredKOS Media Publishing Ltd, the publisher ofKent on Sunday and a series of free weekly newspapers, magazines, websites and mobile products, for an undisclosed sum.[5][6]
In February 2011, Archant London launched an all-new news & information website for London – London24.
In May 2011, Archant Life acquired theWye Valley Life andLife in The Marches titles from Wye Valley Media Ltd.
In November 2011, Archant completed a change to its legal structure to simplify the trading companies into one single legal entity, now called Archant Community Media Limited. This does not change the name of the group which remains as Archant Ltd.
In January 2012, Archant launched the unique iwitness24 community news platform that aims to transform the way it gathers news. It is designed to allow readers to contribute pictures and videos in a quick and easy way.
In January 2013, saw a move into local TV with the launch ofMustard TV online in Norwich.
In August 2013, Archant announced the completion of the acquisition of www.planningfinder.com.
In July 2016 Archant announced a new weekly 'pop-up newspaper',The New European, designed in response to theUK's vote to leave the European Union. With a cover price of £2, it was initially intended to run for four editions only;[7]
In August 2017 Mustard TV closed, having been sold to theThat's TV Group.
In December 2017, Archant won a €676,000.00 grant from Google'sDigital News Initiative. The project, Local Recall, aims to bring 150 years of newspapers back to life through the latest technology; chatbots. Archant, in partnership with local artificial intelligence leaders ubisend,[8] take on this two-year challenge to make their archived newspapers available via voice and text chatbots.[9] However, as of May 2023, the project website is no longer available and redirects to the EDP24 homepage. No explanation has been given for this, or where the money has gone.
In September 2019 Archant announced its intention to out-source all newspaper printing to Newsprinters (Broxbourne) Ltd. from 10 November 2019, and close the Archant Print Center in Thorpe St. Andrew's Norwich, bringing to an end 174 years of newspaper printing in the city. In a letter to staff, Archant said the decision had been taken due to "changes" in the newspaper industry and the move will provide "substantial cost savings".[10] Approximately 95 Norwich Jobs will be lost as a direct result of this change.
In January 2020 Archant sold its headquarters, Prospect House, to regional insurance firm Alan Boswell Group.[11]
In July 2020, Archant announced it had put itself up for sale and was willing to plug a funding deficit exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic's disastrous impact on industry-wide advertising revenues.[12]
On 30 August it was announced that the operational units of Archant had been sold to private equity firmRcapital Partners, (and the pension funds transferred to UK GovernmentPension Protection Fund); the holding companies were put into administration, making the existing shares worthless.[13]
In March 2022, Rcapital sold the group to American media giantGannett via its British subsidiaryNewsquest.[14]
Online and print magazines include:[15][16]
Many of the paid for titles have free online edition (web pages, some also have a digital facsimile of the print edition including advertisements)
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