The Sun Media Group will expand operations in September to include printing and inserting of the Bangor Daily News.

The new work will be done in cooperation with Bangor Publishing and Alliance Press in Brunswick and will not affect delivery to existing Sun Journal customers.

Faced with the expense of modernizing an older press, Bangor opted to close its printing facility in Hampden and use existing press capacity in Lewiston and Brunswick.

Printing and assembly of Bangor’s newspaper and insert packages will be done in Lewiston and Brunswick. The papers will then be trucked overnight to Bangor for morning distribution. Bangor Publishing will print some papers at its facility in Presque Isle.

Sun Media, which publishes the Sun Journal and 10 weekly newspapers in western and southern Maine, will oversee the cooperative operation. Sun Media has a large commercial printing division that prints more than 100 publications.

The Sun Journal, which has 182 employees, expects to add several more to accommodate the new work.

“Sun Media Group already has a very modern distribution facility in Lewiston, and we have years of experience in commercial Web printing,” Vice President of Production James Costello Jr. said. “This new business is a great fit for our company. This partnership will help strengthen locally owned companies and position them for the future.”

Both the Sun Journal and the Bangor Daily News are multi-generational, family-owned Maine businesses.

Partnerships have become increasingly common among newspapers as they maximize efficiency to better serve readers in print and online.

The Sun Media group also has a news-sharing agreement with the BDN.