However, one printer has warned that the paper sector risks "killing off" its customers if it continues to push up costs.

PrintWeek has seen letters from Robert Horne Group and Howard Smith Paper stating that increases in the region of 10% can be expected, while Antalis McNaughton has said that costs could rise by as much as 12%.

Mark Gilbert, divisional director for commercial print at Robert Horne, said: "Our suppliers have told us they cannot ignore energy and raw material costs so increases were inevitable.

"However we are doing everything we can to mitigate these for our customers. We are currently developing a number of offers specifically designed to help our customers win across a wide range of Robert Hornes’ whole portfolio of products and services."

The move follows announcements in recent weeks from the likes of Arjowiggins stating that prices are likely to rise by 10%.

While merchants are passing on increased costs, Inkshop managing director Stuart Mason told PrintWeek that printers’ inability to pass on the increases because some rivals still kept prices low in order to win business was a massive issue in the sector.

However, he said that a far bigger worry was that some customers were now refusing to accept the constant increases and as a result were dropping the medium all together.

"We aren’t losing work to printers, we are just losing work," he said. "They are getting fed up of us increasing our costs. We have companies turn around and say that print isn’t on the budget any more – we recently lost a 7,000-run job because they decided to put it online as a PDF instead."

"It isn’t just paper, it’s all supplies; it is going up on a regular basis and they are pricing the industry out of business. We don’t print a price guide any more. We are a colour printer and we don’t print a price guide, because every time we print one it goes upstairs and it is already out of date."