The Chronicle plans to cut back on its printing and has renegotiated its deal with the company that prints the newspaper.

In July 2009, the Chronicle shut down its presses and outsourced printing to Transcontinental, a Canadian company, which built a highly automated plant in Fremont under a 15-year, $1 billion contract.

Transcontinental will continue to publish the Chronicle, but will only do about two-thirds of the printing that the contract originally demanded, saving the Hearst-owned paper an estimated $30 million a year.

In exchange for the long-term savings – which Transcontinental said would come from using two printing presses instead of three to print the paper – Hearst will pay Transcontinental $200 million, according to a press release from Transcontinental.

The Chronicle’s average daily circulation has dropped from 251,782 in 2009 to 156,500 today.

Meanwhile, Transcontinental said that it will try to attract new customers now that it has additional press capacity due to the Chronicle’s retrenchment. Transcontinental’s plant at 47450 Kato Road in Fremont is only 9 miles from the Mercury News plant at I-880 and Brokaw Road.