Independent News and Media (IN&M) has made a gain of €18.5 million from the sale of its former Sunday World premises in Terenure, Dublin.

The sale was made through the company's wholly-owned subsidiary, Sunday Newspapers Limited.

The purchaser of the site was not disclosed and the company said the proceeds of the sale would be used for "general corporate purposes including investment in product development and marketing".

IN&M has been exiting from lossmaking and non-core businesses over recent years. It sold is shareholding in iTouch, a telecoms company and Chorus, the lossmaking cable company.

It has also been centralising a lot of its printing at CityWest and also in Belfast, where the Belfast Telegraph is based.

The sale of the 1.2 acre site in the Dublin suburb follows the move by Sunday World staff to new Independent Newspapers offices in Talbot Street in the centre of Dublin.

This building also contains staff from the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent and the Evening Herald.

For much of its history the Sunday World has operated separately from the rest of the Independent group, but when IN&M sold its Middle Abbey Street premises this all changed.

The closure of the Sunday World's printing operation has been on the cards since June when it was announced the company had lost several large contracts.Among those was the Irish Farmers' Journal and the Northern Ireland edition of the Star. Express Newspapers also cancelled a contract to print the Irish editions of the Daily Express and Sunday Express titles.

These setbacks made closure inevitable according to the company.

The other problem was the presses in Terenure, which were among the oldest in the industry. While the Terenure presses have been ageing, there has been a wave of investment in new, full-colour printing facilities in the Republic which require less manpower. The Sunday World has been facing strong competition over recent years, including from other IN&M titles like the Star on Sunday.

The British tabloids also have strong positions in the Irish market, particularly the News of the World and the Sunday Mirror. Ireland on Sunday has also been building a strong circulation base, although this has levelled off in the last year.