The latest quarterly Red Flag Alert from Begbies Traynor found a total of 694 companies in the sector are experiencing "significant problems", defined as businesses with a court action, and/or average, poor, very poor, insolvent or out of date accounts.

This is the lowest figure since September 2008, the second lowest figure since July last year and much lower than the 1,030 that faced significant problems in March.

The industry experienced a 15% quarterly fall in companies facing significant problems, the highest fall of any sector.

Print is often said to be the first sector to come out of a recession and, with experts predicting that growth will return to GDP towards the end of this year, the Red Flag statistics appear to support that theory.

However, Mark Halstead, Red Flag operations director at Begbies Traynor, said that it was too early to talk about a recovery.

"There are no green shoots," he said. "Companies need to be able to find finance in a competitive market or they are going to struggle.

"Print has not been as heavily hit this time round, but the plateau has been set very high."

The number of companies in a critical state, defined as those with CCJs totalling £5,000 or more and/or a winding up petition, increased by 66% in the print industry, a large rise but significantly lower than all other sectors aside from transport and communications.

The figures were released as a separate Equifax report also found that the pace of decline in the manufacturing sector had slowed.