In the insolvency practitioner's latest Red Flag report, the figure has increased by 26% during the fourth quarter of 2010 compared with 1,757 in Q3.
Year-on-year comparison faired just slightly better, with the number of companies in the print and packaging sector experiencing financial distress increasing by 6% in Q4 2010 compared to 2,091 in the same quarter the previous year.
Mark Halstead, operations director, Red Flag Alert at Begbies Trayor, said printers are starting to show signs of distress after more CCJs and poor trading accounts were recorded.
He said: "The statistics speak for themselves. Print has suffered an increase quarter-on-quarter of companies suffering, and the early signs are that print is suffering wider effects and needs to look at cash conservation and bad debt provision.
"However, while we will see an increase in insolvencies in the sector this year, it will not be a massive increase."
He added that printers need to take care when granting credit, and ensure there is profit to be made in every deal.
"Printers should look at whether they are efficient as a business, and then they have to go out there and win the business."
Halstead said: "The technological advances are out there and it's wise for printers to invest. Look at the Bank of England, it's holding out on rising interest rates because they know this will stagnate the economy. It's about knowing when to invest."
Begbies Traynor put the results down to the growing impact of e-media, public spending cuts and intense international competition causing the increasing difficulties in the sector.
Nick Hood, partner at Begbies Traynor, said the 2,211 businesses picked up by the Red Flag alert in the fourth quarter of 2010, "may just be the tip of a far larger iceberg of distress in 2011".
He said: "The sector is struggling to cope with a whole range of negative factors.
"Overcapacity is still driving too many businesses into below-cost pricing, with the burden of the VAT increase and savage cuts in spending by the public sector curbing any hope of a meaningful recovery in the foreseeable future."
The figures follow market-wide deterioration, where the number of UK companies facing significant financial problems increased to almost 148,000, the first year-on-year increase for seven quarters.
The print and packaging sector suffered the third worst quarter-on-quarter drop in the final quarter of 2010 of all sectors, exceeded only by the wholesale and IT sectors.
Halstead added that Begbies Traynor has published the Red Flag alert for five years now, and used the same criteria every quarter.
Red Flag measures the corporate distress signals by looking into factual legal and financial data from a range of sources for companies that have been trading for over a year.
Companies with "significant" problems are those with either a court action and/or poor, very poor insolvent or out of date accounts.
Those with "critical" problems are those with CCJs totalling £5,000 or more, and/or wind-up related actions.
