A significant increase in machinery sales from the UK was not enough to stem a 25% drop in European sales for Heidelberg’s print and packaging equipment division in the first three months of the year.
There was slight increase in sales from Germany, but not enough to compensate for declines in Turkey and the Alps areas. The result is that sales dropped from €211 million to €148 million. However, increased sales in the digital and lifecycle division and from new technologies, helped reduce the overall impact to a 13.3% drop in sales to €404 million (€466 million).
Incoming orders fell as a result of the phase out of government support for advanced technology in Italy while the order book grew from customers in China, Japan and the US. The orders for new equipment dropped 13% while lifecycle and digital orders dropped 5%.
This area will be boosted by double digitals in both sales and Ebitda over the next two years as the Manroland Sheetfed sales and service operations are integrated into Heidelberg. The deal took effect on 1 July and brings 3,000 customers and 6,000 presses into Heidelberg’s orbit. The opportunity lies with cross selling Heidelberg technology, including machinery to these customers, many of whom will be operating presses that are more than a decade old.
However Heidelberg’s future lies with its expansion into non print related sectors, namely power generation and defence. This is its new technology division which in the 2026 financial year achieved sales of €14 million and 12 months later increased this to €17 million. The order backlog increased to €31 million (€26 million). The division continues to be loss making as it racks up partnership deals for drones and batteries, in particular using sodium ion technology as an alternative to lithium ion designs. These will grow in future.
The period also marked the take over of what remained of the Polar business and the need to take on manufacture of these machines. Assembly for finishing machines is to move to a new site in North Macedonia to benefit from low labour rates. This is expected to have a beneficial impact on sales and profits during the current financial year.
If sales and orders in EMEA fell in the quarter and this for the Americas remained static, incoming orders and sales from the Asia-Pacific region both increased. Sales were up 3% and incoming orders were up 17%.
Heidelberg chief technology and sales office David Schmedding says: “In our core business, we are targeting our investments toward growth markets, which is also boosting our service, consumables, and spare parts business. At the same time, we can increase the proportion of repeat sales and better balance out new machine business, which tends to depend on economic trends.”
