DMGT History

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Use the interactive timeline below to explore the history of DMGT. Click on photographic images to enlarge them, and use the horizontal scrollbar or the click on the dates above that to move the timeline.

Daily Mail and General Trust plc was incorporated in 1922 and its shares were first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1932.

As one of the longest-established media companies in the UK, DMGT has long invested in quality and editorial excellence in order to become one of the most successful information providers in the country.

How the Daily Mail is Produced video The Story of the Daily Mail

After almost 100 years in Fleet Street, the Company left its original premises of New Carmelite House in Fleet Street in 1988 to move to Northcliffe House in Kensington. Like a good headline, a first impression is the one that counts and 10,000 tons of rubble were removed to create the vast 115 feet high atrium, with a domed roof containing 64 tons of glass.

The break-up of Fleet Street was a revolution that had to happen in the tradition-bound world of newspaper printing where powerful unions resisted efforts by the Fleet Street publishers to modernise and economise.

At the same time as the newspapers moved to Kensington, the printing operation for Southern England moved eight miles away to Surrey Quays. This state-of-the-art printing centre was opened on an 11-acre site at Rotherhithe in London's Docklands in 1989.

Instant communications between editorial, advertising and pre-press departments with Harmsworth Quays Printing (HQP) are crucial. All pages are "made up" on computer screens and the completed pages are flashed to Surrey Quays without even a proof being necessary in Northcliffe House. On arrival they are converted into negative form and are used to make the plates for the press room. Within minutes the presses are ready to run. The entire system has been developed within Associated Newspapers and has become a model for other newspapers worldwide.

DMGT has long invested in quality and editorial excellence in order to become one of the most successful information providers in the country.

The plant at Surrey Quays is the world's biggest flexographic newspaper production facility using water-based inks. Flexo printing produces a clean newspaper which does not smudge, unlike oil-based inks used in traditional web-offset printing, and the very best in bright, sparkling colour. Operating 24 hours a day, HQP prints almost 2.5 million newspapers and supplements daily.

The Harmsworth Quays division is now responsible for all the production services required by Associated Newspapers. A team at Surrey Quays co-ordinates the daily printing requirement for newspapers at contract sites in Belfast, Bradford, Bristol, Dundee, Glasgow, Newcastle, Plymouth, Southampton, Stoke, and Trafford Park, and abroad in Madrid, Orlando and Tenerife, and magazines with Quebecor and Polestar Group mainly at Corby and Watford.

Of these printing works, those in England also print the regional group of newspapers published by Northcliffe Media, another division of Daily Mail and General Trust. Recognising the value people place in their local newspaper, the first Viscount Rothermere founded Northcliffe in 1928. The company now owns over 100 titles with 17 publishing centres in England and Wales producing daily, weekly and free newspapers.

Since 1994 it has expanded from its newspaper base into a variety of media forms, both in the UK and around the world. Investments in electronic publishing have put the Group at the forefront of new and exciting media developments.

Related links

A number of histories concerning the Group have been written, and these can be purchased online by clicking on the links below: