Asset-backed lender Lombard, which is part of the RBS Group, was one of the few remaining high street banks involved in stocking finance for the print sector.

The move will reduce the pool of lenders available to secondhand equipment dealers, who use stocking finance to bridge the gap between acquiring and selling a machine.

A spokesman for Lombard confirmed that stocking finance for print machinery was "not an area of focus for the lender currently".

Greg Handley, managing director of used equipment dealer West Park Graphic Equipment, said that his company still has a stocking line with Lombard but that the "rules had changed".

"They're making it very difficult to utilise the facility if we so desire," he said. "You don't have to be Einstein to work out that they're not really interested in doing it anymore with the terms and conditions that they've put down now."

Handley added that equipment dealers who exclusively used Lombard could be hurt by the decision, depending on how financially secure their business is.

"Lombard's rates were very good compared with some of the other asset-based lenders, so obviously Lombard taking the stocking facility out of the market may affect some dealers, depending on what other lines they have available," he said.

"We've just moved on with another bank so it's not an issue for us, but it depends how financially secure you are as to what kind of deal you can get – we're on something now where we're not paying that much more than we were."

According to David Bunker, director of Close Print Finance, which is the largest provider of stocking finance for print equipment, Lombard's withdrawal does not come as a surprise.

He said: "I think Lombard and other high street banks have for some time lost their appetite for asset finance and non-core business.

"In the last two years they have wanted to retain as much capital as possible because of the capital ratio requirements imposed on them by the government.

"They're looking to warehouse as much capital as possible and asset finance is quite capital intensive in terms of people and administration."

Lombard stressed that its decision only applied to stocking and that it had no impact on its general appetite to lend to the print sector.

However, Bunker described the move as a continuation of the mainstream banks' "trimming" of their asset finance provision.

"Lombard and Barclays are two businesses that have pulled back from the print industry and asset finance in general," he said.

"Since the crash they terminated many of their broker relationships and they're only accepting business from their core brokers, because asset finance was deemed to be too much trouble.

"And the problem with stocking finance in particular is that it is very difficult to administer. You've got to be absolutely certain of your values and certain of your relationships."