Under the terms of the deal, which has been conservatively valued at around £70m, MBA Group will become a sub-contractor to Vertex for all of its UK transactional and direct mail production, currently comprising 16 blue chip clients with a combined print spend of "just under £8m a year".

The contract went live on 30 June and MBA has already taken on the lease for part of Vertex's 208,000 sq ft site in Gemini Park, Warrington, acquired the firm's production assets and transferred employment of around 40 Vertex production staff to add to the 40 staff already employed at MBA Warrington.

MBA Group chairman Bachar Aintaoui said: "We have acquired all of the assets, the staff and all of the collateral relating to the production element of that site. Potentially the contract will be worth a lot more than £70m because at this moment it's worth about £8m a year.

"What we're doing is amalgamating the two sites - the new 42,000 sq ft site [half of Vertex Unit 2] and our existing 15,000 sq ft site - and we're running the business from there. We'll keep the old MBA site in the short-term as we migrate from one to the other."

The deal, which will increase MBA's turnover by around 25% to £40m, gives the North London-headquartered firm significantly greater scale and opens the door to further growth in the form of similar outsourced transactional and transpromo print agreements.

James Eyre, head of UK marketing for Vertex, said the global BPO business had been attracted to MBA's expertise in print, particularly around on-demand print production, which he said would benefit the firm's utilities clients.

"The partnership with MBA is a reaction to what our clients are talking to us about in terms of wanting quicker speed to market to allow them to get things like price change information out as quickly as possible," said Eyre.

"We wanted a production partner that would be the best fit for that particular element of the business - for the print side rather than the broader BPO element - so that we could leverage the expertise of both companies and come up with something that's a more compelling proposition for both sets of clients."

Aintaoui added: "The strategic partnership between Vertex and MBA, combining our print and BPO market experience, critical mass and innovative approach will result in a range of benefits for our clients."