Heidelberg technology chief Jurgen Rautert said the green goal of ditching alcohol completely made operation more prone to scumming or emulsifying by decreasing the tolerance between not enough and too much water.

He added that running press dampening using only water could lead to unnecessary waste, defeating the purpose of not using alcohol.

However, his research showed that more than four in five German offset print shops used between 7% and 18% alcohol in their dampening solutions, whereas the "sweet spot" was 3%.

"Running at 15% is ignoring what technology can give you. There is lots of room for improvement."

He said the company would "increase efforts to bring printers up to speed with this ecologically important subject."

Rautert claimed that a busy print shop that ran a Speedmaster XL 105-6+L would make a range of environmental savings across paper, energy, ink, alcohol, cleaning agents, water and powder, translating to £152,000 (€210,000) a year.