This article is from page 29 of the 2009-12-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 29 JPG
now has losses of over €4.5million but, according to Mr Collison, this rep- resents the full start-up costs of the newspaper since December 2005.
He said that this figure was “sig- nificantly below what we anticipated in our original business plan.”
‘The paper made a profit for the first time in September and is on course to break-even for the final quarter of the year. This was achieved through
extensive cost reductions, which cut weekly operational costs by over 50 per cent.”
“This would not have been pos- sible without the active cooperation and goodwill of staff whose sacri- fices over the past year have ensured the paper’s long-term survival’, he added.
The paper was established to chal- lenge the 100-year long dominance of The Clare Champion and _ latest ABC figures show The Champion’s circulation at 19,046 compared to The People’s 12,154.
Mr Collison said: “As a start-up operation, The Clare People had no accumulated reserves and felt the effects of the recession at an earlier stage than most of the legacy titles.”
‘This in some way proved a bless- ing in disguise as it enabled us to tackle our cost base earlier than might have been the norm. I would
expect that we will be one of the very few regional newspapers reporting break even or a profit for the final [VET to) axe) O hae
In the returns, the directors state that the key to this will be the achievement of forecasted revenues and the ability to contain costs at projected levels.”
“We initially hoped to reach breakeven during 2009 but the ex- pectation now 1s of further losses, but at approximately 45% of the 2008 levels, which in the current economic environment, 1s a positive result.”
The directors state that they and the shareholders have advanced interest free loans of €3.3million to the end of 2008 and have advanced further loans of €326,000 to the company up to September 20, 2009.