The £25m-turnover Bicester, Oxfordshire-headquartered company said the move, which will come into effect from 1 April 2020, is in line with its Marxist-capitalist principles of “doing the right thing, for the right reason and for the greater good”.

Webmart chief executive and founder Simon Biltcliffe said the business wants to ensure that its print suppliers have the work to fill their presses and have the cash as quickly as possible.

He told Printweek: “Any business is amazingly grateful and dependent on its great suppliers. With the best management and team in the world, if you're caught out by something like this then it will really give you a hard time, so if we can help ease the pain a bit with the trade that we do with our suppliers then I want to help in any way that we can.

“So we've rearranged all that we do in our finance team to accommodate it. We've got our year-end coming up on 31 March, so as soon as that's completed we'll be straight onto this. Instead of doing a month-end run, we'll batch it into weeks. When a job gets completed and their invoice matches our payment confirmation, we will process it.”

He added: “We'll keep this going until we get out the other side. I'm hoping it's as short as three months but I think that realistically is the shortest it will be, so it's a matter of really planning for that period of time as best as you possibly can to make sure that you've got the cash to see you through.

“I do appreciate that it will be majorly challenging for some people, especially those with high levels of indebtedness and companies that they're trading with going bust as well. We're very fortunate that we're a financially strong business, and we want to work with our suppliers as best as we possibly can to support them through these amazingly challenging times.”

Biltcliffe said he expects to see some types of work increase over this period.

“After all, when has there ever been a better time to use direct mail or a door drop than now when many people are at home?”