In 2010, a five-year run of average annual declines of 4% will leave a depleted industry of just 9,900 companies – a 25% drop over 10 years.

The staff count is set for an even more acute downturn of 29% across the decade, with people working in print in 2010 expected to number 141,000 by the same date.

This year the industry is expected to lose 5,000 positions, although the casualties even this early on in the year look heavy. So far, printweek.com and PrintWeek have reported on nearly 1,000 jobs under threat in the first five or six weeks of 2008.

Across the year, numbers of companies facing serious and critical problems is seasonal, with those facing "significant" problems peaking at the start and end of the year, while those facing "critical" problems most numerous in November.

Begbies Traynor executive chairman Nick Hood told printweek.com: "You always get an increase at this time of year." He said that as many print companies use invoice discounters to ease cashflow problems, fitting in enough work to cover the Christmas holiday period can pose difficulties.

Regionally, the South East, North East, North West and East Midlands fared much worse in 2007 compared with the previous year in terms of CCJs totalling £5,000 or more and/or Winding-Up Petition-related actions.

BPIF Information Services Manager Kyle Jardine said that it could be quite difficult to gauge the state of the industry from these figures against volume and value measures.

"The volume of paper used was about 1.5% down from 2005 to 2006," he told printweek.com. "But companies have been producing less waste trying to be more environmentally friendly".

Likewise the classification of companies can skew the figures. A company may produce print as part of the service it offers but not consider itself a printer.

However, Hood was damning in his outlook. "The print sector still suffers from an overcapacity problem that is not yet solved," he told printweek.com. "Conditions can only get worse as the economy slows down. I don't see an end to it."

He added: "There are still too many over-indebted, under-capitalised printers out there.

"You have to remember we're in a liquidity crunch. Bankers up and down the country have been asked to look closely at their borrowers."