These will all be housed in a purpose-built state-of-the-art 13,200sqm facility adjacent to its European headquarters in Chester, currently in the final stages of completion.

An advertisement for director of production at the plant appeared in The Sunday Times on 17 April.

MBNA Europe press officer Paul Lawler said the firm was also currently recruiting locally for staff.

Lawler declined to put a figure on how much the firm currently spends on its print and fulfilment, or which companies had lost work as a result.

This will affect only its transactional print and fulfilment items, with direct mail unaffected.

The firm is believed to be the biggest direct mail customer in the UK. It spent 66m in 2003, a 36% increase on the previous year.

Its new plant will open at Chester Business Park in 2006, and once fully operational will have the capacity to produce 350,000 transactional items per day.

It will print MBNA's statements and cards, and handle the mailing of statements and letters.

The decision to insource would give the company more control over its production, Lawler said, and had followed a similar move in the US.

Sources questioned the decision, which goes against the current vogue in divesting non-core businesses, and came in the same week that RR Donnelley swooped for BPO specialist Astron.

MBNA is the world's largest independent credit card lender, with endorsements from over 5,000 organisations and institutions worldwide, including AOL, Manchester United, and the WWF.

Its European wing employs over 5,000 people, most of them in the UK.

Story by Andy Scott