Up to 60 new paychecks will be generated by an Ankeny manufacturing operation by mid-2007. The company’s business, coincidentally, is printing checks.

Construction is expected to begin before the end of the year on a 20,000-square-foot expansion to the Clarke American Corp. check manufacturing plant at 3001 S.E. Convenience Blvd. in Ankeny. The facility, which currently employs 85 people, is one of nine plants operated by San Antonio, Texas-based company. The Ankeny location is its only production facility undergoing an expansion. The company closed a plant in Columbus, Ohio, earlier this year.

The expansion comes despite a continuing trend toward less check usage as individuals and businesses shift toward electronic means of payments, such as debit cards and online bill payment.

“Checks and paper processing are declining; that’s no surprise,” said Joe Mengele, Clarke American’s vice president of check manufacturing. “But there is still no end in sight. We estimate there will still be [an industry total of] 26 billion checks that will be processed in 2010.” Mengele said the Columbus closure had no relation to the Ankeny expansion.

According to the most recent Federal Reserve System survey from 2004, the number of checks paid in the United States declined by an average of 4.3 percent per year between 2000 and 2003, with 36.7 billion checks issued in 2003. That same year also marked the first time that electronic payment transactions, which numbered 44.5 billion, surpassed check payments.

“There are still a lot of checks being written,” said David Fettig, a spokesman for the Federal Reserve System’s Financial Services Policy Committee in Minneapolis. “And business-to-business transactions by checks aren’t coming down as fast as personal transactions are.”

Additionally, statistics on processed checks don’t reflect the number of transactions made through the Automated Clearing House, a private electronic payment network used by banks that allows merchants to immediately process paper checks for payment and hand the paper checks back to their customers, Fettig said. With ACH transactions increasing, “it suggests that there may be some additional business (the check printing companies) can do.”

One of three major providers of checks in the industry, Clarke American produces more than 10 billion personal and business checks a year. The company, a subsidiary of publicly traded M&F Worldwide Corp., recently reported third-quarter net income of $3.9 million, a slide of $3 million from the 2005 period, on revenues of $156.2 million. The company attributed the decrease in earnings primarily to increased expenses from its acquisition by M&F.

Mengele said the company’s check manufacturing plants are electronically linked, meaning that work can be easily routed to any of its plants. It also operates five customer-service call centers. The Ankeny plant, which began operations four years ago, will remain solely a check production facility, he said.

“Our growth in Ankeny is really a part of our overall refinement of our manufacturing processes so we can maximize our efficiency,” Mengele said. “We evaluate our plant network multiple times a year.

“We chose this facility because we really appreciate the quality of the work force,” he added. “We appreciate them and we’re really trying to create the same opportunity back for them. It’s a great place to be.”

Wages at the Ankeny plant range from about $11 an hour for entry-level positions to $21 an hour for more technical positions. The new positions will be light manufacturing jobs similar to those now at the plant. Mengele said the company is seeking tax incentives through the city of Ankeny.