BGP and Future declined to comment but PrintWeek understands that the contract has been moved to William Gibbons, which already printed a number of Future titles, following a fundamental disagreement on pricing.

Bicester-based BGP, which has printed for Future since the collapse of Kidderminster printer TPL in 2004, hinted at such a move following publication of its full-year results last November.

Speaking at the time, chief executive David Holland said that now the printer had achieved the requisite scale to match its technology, it would be "refining the fill to optimise the commerciality of the investment".

Holland added that the company had been "very competitive" on pricing, but said that he didn’t believe BGP had been the lowest price on any of the contracts it had won.

The move follows heavy consolidation throughout the UK web offset market in the past five years, and there are now real signs printers are willing to ditch uneconomical work rather than chase market share.

According to Polestar’s chief executive Barry Hibbert, while retail demand remains weak and pricing levels remain poor, the exponential rise in input costs has led the sector close to a tipping point.

"Energy and ink costs are rising substantially faster than anything else and these prices will have to be borne by the publisher because it just can’t be sustained going forward," he said.

"There’s a lot of capacity in the marketplace that is going to come out because unless it can make a margin there’s no point in keeping that capacity open – that goes for us as well as the competition."

Hibbert estimated that anything upwards of 10 to 15 eight-page, 16-page and bottom-end 32-page presses would come out of the market in the next 12 months, leading to a dramatic shift in available capacity.

"There’s no way printers can sustain further energy and ink increases with the pricing we’ve got in the marketplace therefore any spare capacity that is not making margin isn’t going to survive," he added.

Wyndeham Press Group chief executive Paul Utting said: "It’s completely right for every printer to be reviewing its business at the moment with the increases in raw materials that we have seen."

Andrew Pindar, Pindar Group chairman, agreed that the two biggest players in the sector were likely to take out capacity, because they were not making money.

"Pricing has remained aggressive up to this point, traditionally the quietest time of the year, but I think we’re seeing the lull or calm before what I predict will be a significant storm," he said. "Buyers have been able to enjoy uneconomic predatory pricing for quite a while now, but we are seeing a shift in thinking whereby supply, quality of supply, and continuity of supply are every bit as important as price."

One industry insider said that he expected to see "radical change" in the next few weeks, led by the three biggest web offset printers. "Prices in the sector are firming up but they’ve got a huge way to go."

William Gibbons was unavailable to comment.