The firm has entered a 30-day consultation with staff at its Cox & Wyman plant in Reading, which it proposes to close. The factory produces paperback books and has around 40 employees.

The Cox & Wyman plant had been viewed as vulnerable for some time, with CPI’s most recent UK investments focused on its other sites including Antony Rowe and Mackays.

“Cox & Wyman is a shell of a place compared with what it used to be,” said a source close to the situation. “When plants aren’t invested in, you know the writing is on the wall.”

The £115m group is also proposing redundancies at White Quill in Croydon, which prints jackets and covers, and at hardback and paperback manufacturing site Mackays in Chatham. PrintWeek understands that around 30 redundancies are planned at Mackays, and 15-20 at White Quill.

CPI declined to comment.

Tim Elliott, regional officer at Unite the Union and a representative on CPI’s European Works Council, said: “This is a sad day and it’s a tragedy for a loyal workforce at Cox & Wyman – some of the employees have been there for a long time.

“What’s going on in book printing now is the same as we’ve had in magazines with one company against another. There’s only two big players now and this [the Penguin Random House contract] was a huge one to win or lose.”

CPI employed 960 staff in the UK in its last financial year.

Cox & Wyman is located on a large site close to Reading town centre. It is one of the oldest printing companies in the UK, with a history stretching back more than 200 years to 1777.

PrintWeek revealed yesterday that St Ives Clays has become the sole supplier of monochrome books to Penguin Random House, and will take over the work currently produced by CPI as the publisher's existing contracts expire.