According to data supplied to PrintWeek by the BIS, 361 print and repro business received a total of £33m of the £1.8bn drawn between the EFG’s initiation in January 2009 and January 2013.

The data, which is broken down by SIC code, shows that one unknown newspaper printer benefited from an £850,000 loan, while 312 commercial printers received a total of £27.8m in loans thanks to the EFG.

Pre-press and pre-media service providers were able to borrow £4.4m under the scheme, spread across 48 companies.

Together this means that print and repro businesses represented 11% of the £297m loans drawn by the manufacturing sector and just 2% of the £1.8bn lent to all sectors.

But one print finance broker said uptake of the EFG could have been greater, had it been easier to apply.

Jamie Nelson of Compass Business Finance said he was surprised that the number of printers accessing the finance scheme was as high as the breakdown indicates, due to a lack of awareness and the complexity of the application process.

He added that he had rarely come across the EFG in the print finance industry and said it was not as well-publicised as the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) or Funding for Lending scheme (FLS).

"Certainly printers have benefited much more from the RGF and FLS, but whether the funding is going to the right customers is another question," he said. "I think that by introducing transparency measures, we might get the answers."

The EFG, which replaced the Small Firms Loan Guarantee (SFLG), has injected £1.1bn to the UK economy since May 2010, according to a Durham University report commissioned by the BIS.

Lenders are backed by the government, which acts as a guarantor for up to 75% of the loan’s value to encourage banks to finance SMEs that do not have a lengthy or strong credit history or collateral to gain finance through traditional lending.

This means EFG funding is an "exhaustive" process that is only available to companies that have considered all other finance options, according to Nelson. He added that most companies in the print market had some sort of collateral with which to secure loans.