This year Newton Press celebrates its 50th year as the town’s first commercial printing company, and 3 years later becoming, publishers of the Newtonian, later to be called Newton News.
Syd Howarth moved to the town at the age of 25 to start the business and among other pioneers at the time has seen Newton Aycliffe grow from a few thousand people to a town of nearly 30,000.
Newton Press started in a small baking unit at the rear of Neville Parade shopping precinct, offering a specialist bookbinding and printing service.
Throughout the 70’s, 80’s Newton Press became well established taking retail premises in the town centre opening the second newsagency, a children’s clothiers and a specialist stationery shop. Newton Press print works moved to new premises on Greenwell Road.
It was one of biggest disappointments to Syd when the ADC, facing dissolution, decided to sell the town centre to a private landlord. Syd led a consortium of shopkeepers which put in a bid to buy the town centre with the aim of each shop becoming privately owned. The ADC however went for the higher bidder, Grainger Trust, who also promised to put a roof over Beveridge Way. This as everyone knows, never materialised and the new owners sold after a few years for a massive profit.
We moved out of retailing as shop rents and rates increased, quickly realising it is best to own rather than rent. With this in mind and needing more space the print works moved from its Greenwell Road premises to the unit we now occupy on St Cuthbert’s Way on the Business Park.
As with most manufacturing trades, technology has improved the way we produce things and in printing there has been a revolution. Syd has seen it evolve from hand composition through to hot metal typesetting to computer generated origination, computer to plate, to the latest full colour digital printing. Newton Press pride themselves on keeping up with the latest technology and have invested heavily in the latest and evnironmentally friendly machines.
Syd was originally from Nottingham but moved to the North East to complete National Service in the RAF. Posted to Boulmer he fell in love with the countryside, married a girl from Alnwick and vowed never to return to big city life. He was attracted to Newton Aycliffe by its “garden city” environment, impressed by lots of open grassed areas, and the fact that industry was separated from residential areas and confined to an industrial estate.
Starting a new business in 1963 was hard work, there were no grants, rent or rate reductions for entrepreneurs – just hard graft and long hours to become established. But if you give good service and charge reasonable prices a business should succeed and Newton Press lived by that philosophy and kept abreast of the printing trade by always investing in new technology and training.
Syd admits he has been lucky in having his three sons Paul, Stuart and Christopher join him in the business since they each left school. They all started their training at a very early age, going down to the factory to help Dad out as schoolboys and each beginning their working life as apprentices earning their wages the same as any other employee.
They learnt to be independent and over the years have developed as employers, taking over the reins as Syd faced retirement age. Although the business is in the hands of his sons, Syd retains the role of Honorary Editor and enjoys a good relationship with the town’s community, leading local campaigns, taking photos for the weekly newspaper and has worked on many local committees.
The Newton News is his pride and joy and has been acknowledged as the longest running free publication newspaper in the UK. As the current Mayor recently quoted “the Newton News is unique in its role as a community newspaper”.
Syd is proud to be offering the townspeople a newspaper that is purely for them. Readers know they can contribute to the columns without fear or favour and many a battle has been won by exposing wrongs through Newton News publicity. Newton Press is often thanked for the service it provides through Newton News and that is reward enough for the Howarth family business.
It has become an institution and enjoys great influence in the area it covers. It is now read universally by Newtonians who have moved or work in countries throughout the world and since going on-line Newton News website receives over 10,000 hits per week and is also popular on facebook and twitter.
The future is always unknown in a trade which has changed so much over the last 50 years, but Newton Press hope continue to provide a good printing service and the ever popular Newton News into the next 50 years.
