"Now I know that we've got 10m of orders to fulfil for this coming year, as well as any other work we pick up as the year goes on," said managing director Greg Smith.

This latest deal with the "extremely well-known blue-chip" covers the production of "standard items" as well as the handling of 100,000 personalised mailings every week. The firm has also developed a bespoke Mailsort offering, which has cut the clients postal costs by 50%.

As a result of the win Cats has installed a 100,000 six-station Bwe Bell+Howell C4 mailing line, with a synchronised Muller front-end capable of running 6,000iph at its Swindon headquarters.

The other three wins for the digital print and facilities management firm are to handle the document print requirements for Roehampton, Middlesex and Nottingham Universities.

Work for the contracts is carried at both the universities' in-house print facilities, which Cats runs, and its own 24/7 Swindon hub which boasts 18 Xerox DocuTechs and seven high-volume colour digital presses.

"They don't rent any equipment off us, they just pay-as-you-go," said Smith. "It's completely managed and all done on a cost per copy so they only pay for what they need."

While the bulk of overspill and long-run work is carried out in Swindon the firm also manages print sites in Glasgow, Nottingham and plans to open a new London-based facility in Q3.

Cats' year-end figures showed that its 2004/05 turnover increased by 46% to 8m. "We've had a fantastic year," said Smith.

By Darryl Danielli