The Boston Globe signed an agreement Friday to buy a building in a Taunton industrial park that would serve as its newspaper printing plant starting in early 2017.
The 330,000-square-foot building, located at 300 Constitution Drive in Taunton, would house the Globe’s entire printing operation after it moves from its current headquarters on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester.
“We did an exhaustive search of every available industrial building in Eastern Massachusetts,’’ said Mike Sheehan, chief executive of the Globe. The deal is still subject to an inspection and due diligence. If the purchase is completed, Sheehan said, the new plant “will be a far more efficient printing operation.”
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The Globe previously has said it was selling the Dorchester property where it has been based since 1958. The company is in final negotiations with Winstanley Enterprises of Concord, a commercial developer, on a sale of the 16.5-acre Dorchester site.
In addition to locating a site for the printing operation, the Globe is narrowing down options for a new location for newsroom, advertising, and other workers.
The company plans to buy newer presses for the Taunton location, where it intends to continue to print the Globe, The New York Times, the Boston Herald, and other papers.
Sheehan said that, contrary to a report in the Boston Business Journal, the Globe had a strong preference to buy, and not rent, a building for the presses. “Everything we do is an investment in the quality of our product,’’ Sheehan said. “Why rent when we have the resources to own?”
The Globe’s printing operation — including pressmen, mailers, and drivers — includes roughly 1,000 people. The company employs a total of about 1,900 full- and part-time workers.
Beth Healy can be reached at beth.healy@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @HealyBeth.