The service is aimed at assisting business growth by offering funding support for mergers and acquisitions, MBOs, property, working capital and investment for plant and machinery.

It will make funding available in line with printers' individual needs, and can also be used for operating lease, capital release schemes and asset refinancing.

Kevin Barron, managing director of Contour Business Finance, said: "We started the service because of the way the banks have been acting in the past two years; they are running what the economists call an oligopoly.

"It's not just the print sector that is affected, but it is possibly a bit worse in this market as the banks wrongly assume that print is a dying industry, which is nonsense."

The service has access to £15m through three major financial institutions.

Barron said he would look for equity-based deals and they would have to be something "a bit different, maybe an investment in web-to-print or digital".

Richmond Capital Partners chief executive Paul Holohan said: "We have witnessed first hand how banks have been and still are treating printing businesses.

"We are increasingly being asked where printers can find capital to expand or deal with problems with their bank."

He added that SMEs were the lifeblood necessary to help the nation's recovery, and that the government must force the banks to stimulate enterprise by making investment finance available.