Greetings cards giant Hallmark has announced plans to turn Bradford into its sole UK manufacturing base.

The move will mean all of its operations at Altham, East Lancashire, including up to 300 jobs, being transferred over the next 15 months.

The plan ties in with the company's relocation of its head office to a multi-million pound site off Bingley Road, Heaton, Bradford, last month.

Hallmark has now entered into talks with its workforce in Altham and it hopes to persuade them to make the move in early 2003.

Communications manager Gill Adams said: "We really do want everybody from over there to move here but realistically we know, for family or personal reasons, that not everyone will choose to do that.

"That will result in more recruitment in Bradford, which will, if the plans go ahead, become home to all of our manufacturing activity in the UK.

"This is great news for Bradford and for the company, but we are handling it very sensitively and have been sure to give plenty of notice, because obviously it is a blow for Lancashire."

About 170 new marketing, sales, design, finance and administration jobs were created, taking the office total to 650, with Hallmark's move to the former WN Sharpe complex in Bingley Road.

The new operations would be based at the firm's older Dawson Lane plant in Tong Street, which already employs 700 people.

Hallmark chose the site as the most suitable for a flexible central manufacturing base which could deliver its 10,000 strong product range.

The business, which succeeded in bringing 20 per cent of its southern workforce with it in the move to Bradford, is offering travel allowances and relocation support to its Altham-based staff.

But in Lancashire the proposal has been greeted with dismay.

Peter Britcliffe, leader of the local authority for the area, Hyndburn Council, said it was as a "devastating blow" for the whole area.

"This is one of Hyndburn's biggest employers," he said. "It's not the Christmas present we wanted."

Hallmark is the UK's largest greetings cards producer, and makes around one billion cards a year.