Shipping industry weekly newspaper Lloyd’s List has relaunched in a Berliner format, breaking with 271 years of tradition as a broadsheet.
The title has historically carried such impenetrable sentences as ‘…le Ferne Privateer of 8 guns and Grand Clamp of 12 ditto and 80 men, are taken by the Amazon and Antigua Privateers and carried into Antigua”, and continues to be seen as a very traditional newspaper.
It has moved its printing operation from the West Ferry in East London to The Guardian’s Berliner printing plant in nearby Stratford, allowing it to go full colour for the first time.
Editor Julian Bray said: ‘This has been a pipe dream of mine ever since I joined as editor seven years ago and I have pushed the internal strategic debate of whether remaining broadsheet was right.
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‘An obvious option was to go classic tabloid, but we rejected that because it would not fit the authoritative tone of a serious business paper.
‘Now it is full colour, we can have more pages which can be more easily produced and better handle the sort of material we have got.
‘The compact Berliner format is much more easily accessible and useful for them.”
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The paper has recruited three new members of editorial staff and pagination will increase from an average of 14 pages to 20. There will be more news, features, and markets’ news coverage, and its special reports section is also being beefed up.
Publisher Informa has invested in a new integrated computer management system, Eidos, the same used by the Financial Times.
Bray said part of the reason for Informa investing so much in the paper is because the shipping and maritime markets are going through a boom on the back of world trade.
He explained: ‘This relaunch is very much on the back of the confidence, profitability and interest in the world of shipping.”
Circulation has been in decline for the past 15 years with a current average Monday to Friday sale of 7,146.
Bray said: ‘Throughout the oil industry, the insurance industry and the shipping industry there has been massive consolidation so you now have fewer, bigger companies which has historically had a negative impact on our circulation.
‘However, the profitability and the interest in shipping has meant that there are more professional services companies interested in banks insurers and other services companies are interested in the shipping business.”
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