A 90-day consultation has begun at the Essex facility, which employs 180 staff.

All of the employees face losing their jobs, according to John Cooling, managing director of parent Goodhead Group. "I've never known anything as bad as this in the whole of my working career," he said.

Last-minute attempts to convince BT to keep the 20m directories-a-year contract in the UK had come to nothing, Cooling said. But he added that he was still working on options to get more work for the plant. "I haven't given up on [it]," he said.

It was revealed last week that BT had issued BGP with just three months' notice that it was to move the printing of the Phone Book abroad for the first time in its history.

Goodhead Group also owns web-offset house BGP Bicester and sheetfed printer Stones the Printers in Banbury. "There is a viable business behind [Colchester] that we're developing in the magazines world," said Cooling.