Sources close to the company said a crisis meeting had been held with staff last Friday (4 April), with just over 40 redundancies to be made over the next fortnight. Graphoprint employs around 230 staff.

Four of Graphoprint's five web presses are out of action. An expert at Goss International who examined the fire-damaged equipment, including Graphoprint's brand new M600D, pronounced the presses to be "virtually scrap... they are completely damaged from one end to the other."

The only press running at the site is an older M600B, which was in a separate part of the factory.

New Jarrold Printing, St Ives and Cooper Clegg have been printing on behalf of the firm during the hiatus.

The official investigation into the cause of the fire is still ongoing, and reports blaming an electrical fault on an ink pump have been dismissed as "unlikely".

Graphoprint was hit by a blaze 14 years ago, when fire ripped through a six-month old M850B web over the New Year shutdown.

Story by Jo Francis