The increase, across all four weight bandings, took effect on all newspaper titles in the publisher’s stable from January 1 2019, says the NFRN.
The move follows approaches from the NFRN just before Christmas to all national publishers who participate in the scheme asking them to look again at the payment rates.
NFRN National President Mike Mitchelson said: “We are pleased that Mail Newspapers has recognised the importance of better rewarding HND retailers for the extra work involved in handling third party advertising inserts. Coupled with a spate of recent cover price increases that were accompanied by pro rata margins, this is a good start to the year and we hope that other publishers will now follow the Mail’s lead. I would now urge all members who offer HND to make sure they have registered with their news wholesaler to receive the benefit of these payments.”
NFRN Head of News Brian Murphy added: “Before Christmas we made it clear to newspaper publishers that we were unhappy with the current rates of payment for third party inserts. Mail Newspapers is the first publisher to respond positively to our call and we hope to receive further positive news from their publishing colleagues in due course."
The payments have to be negotiated individually with each major newspaper publisher that participates in the payments scheme. HND retailers must register with their news wholesaler and payments are triggered automatically and paid each quarter.
