Earlier this month it was announced that Trafford Park, where the Northern and Scottish versions of the newspapers are printed, would begin passing printing over to News Printers Group (NPG) from 7 July.

But the move from West Ferry, which the Telegraph Media Group (TMG) jointly owns alongside Express Newspapers, was not expected to go through so soon.

It is now anticipated that a large number of staff at West Ferry will be made redundant in September, once printing is completed. However, the site still prints the Daily Express, the Daily Star and some Financial Times.

The publisher would not comment on numbers of redundancies because it is West Ferry Printers that employ the staff.

West Ferry Printers was unavailable to comment on the situation.

However, Steve Sibbald of Unite said: "We don’t know when the redundancies will take place yet, we have had several meetings. We are expecting 120-140 staff to be made redundant but there have been quite a number of volunteers so we would expect them to go first.

"As of yet we have not agreed a criteria for the compulsory redundancies, we expect to have a definite agreement in the next couple of weeks. We anticipate it going relatively smoothly because we have had so long to discuss options."

A TMG spokeswoman said: "TMG considers that the decision to move its print operations to NPG is the best option to ensure the future prosperity of its newspaper titles. The current tough economic climate has necessitated decisions such as these, and hard choices have had to be made."

She added: "The first copy of The Weekly Telegraph to be printed at Broxbourne will be the 29 July edition.

"The move will take place gradually throughout August; it is hoped that everything is complete by the first week of September."

NPG will be taking over the printing of the Telegraph newspapers a year in advance, with the original notice indicating that the newspapers would leave West Ferry in September 2009.

A News International spokesperson added: "News Printers Group welcomes TMG to Broxbourne. With this final stage of the transition from TMG's existing sites now under way, the print migration process will soon be complete.

"Our print plant at Eurocentral is already producing the Scottish editions of the Telegraph titles, and Knowsley will produce Northern editions from 4 August.

"We will continue to deliver a high-quality product for TMG and look forward to seeing the first full edition of The Daily Telegraph roll off the NPG presses at Broxbourne."