The sum comprises the costs to productivity of smoking breaks and smoking-related illnesses, as well as the effects of fire damage caused by smoking.

The study, carried out by a team at the London School of Economics, found that smoking breaks alone cost £914m each year, while time taken off for smoking-related illnesses cost £1.1bn and fires cost £133m.

It estimated smoking breaks each lasted around 2m 30s and that 7% of fires are caused by smoking with an average cost of £31,000 in damage and impact on productivity.

By region, the study found that London was most affected by the impact of smoking.

Professor Alistair McGuire, who led the study, told PrintWeek: "Although since 2007 all workplaces are smoke-free, it hasn't stopped the cost of smoking falling on employers. Smokers still smoke, they still take smoking breaks and they still have illnesses."

He said that conservative estimates suggest that smokers take on average two extra days off sick each year.

However BPIF Andy Brown said that introducing initiatives such as banning smoking during work hours would be very controversial.

He said while it is clear that smoking is damaging to health, there are other dangerous activities that staff may participate in that could equally impact productivity. "Where would you draw the line?" he asked.

However, he suggested that because of the nature of commercial print work, and particularly packaging, the current legislation meant that even taking smoking breaks was now sometimes impossible because of the size of some of the plants.

"It's going to be out of bounds for a lot of people in our industry full stop," he said.