Heidelberg is blaming a combination of high interest rates and the pre Drupa effect for a drop off in incoming orders at the nine-month stage.
However, the drop in orders has not yet affected sales so has not yet filtered through to have an impact on group results and Heidelberg says it is on course to hit targets for the year in terms of sales.
The drop in orders is likely to show up in around six months, but Heidelberg is hopeful that conditions will be very different by then. In a call with analysts, CEO Dr Ludwin Monz, says: “We are counting on the economy to recover somewhat by then and hopefully demand will be increasing by then as a result of falling interest rates and of the Drupa trade show.”
In the meantime the company has implemented short term working arrangements to help reduce costs and has a further 250 improvement measures that are currently being worked on.
Overall orders in Q3 dropped from €630 million to €508 million, led by declines in bookings from Emea (-17%) and North America (-22%). Orders from Asia, still in post Covid recovery mode, remained steady.
This is especially true of the packaging sector where orders after nine months are on a par with 2023 at €862 million. Orders from the print sector by contrast had slipped to €822 million from €977 million a year earlier. This is also reflected in sales revenues. Print reported sales of €804 million (€898 million) at the nine month mark while packaging increased sales to €874 million (€812 million). This 8% increase helped offset the decline in sales to commercial printers.
The company needs a boost from Drupa and has been preparing for the show with developments that tackle customer issues. Monz explains: “Our customers face three main challenges, ever increasing cost pressure, a shortage of skilled workers and rising sustainability requirement. Heidelberg will be presenting solutions to these challenges at Drupa.”
The focus will be on how high productivity will reduce the cost per sheet in high volume sheetfed printing, using developments of its Push to stop concept to address the shortage of skilled labour helped by increased connectivity to digital workflows. These developments will also reduce waste and cut energy per sheet printed.
This is 40% lower on a modern Speedmaster compared to a 1990 model. With a 21,000sph machine as will be shown a Drupa, the energy cost per sheet comes down a further notch.
Internally Heidelberg has pushed towards reduced environmental impacts and to help printers reduce energy and resource consumption. “Sustainability in print production is one of the biggest trends worldwide and at the same time a major challenge for our industry,” he says.
The increasing use of digitised workflows, something that Heidelberg has been working on as a founder member of the CIP4 developing JDF, for more than two decades. A Heidelberg Customer Portal provides insight to the production process using a number of apps, analytics routines, recommendations of maintenance and so on. Further apps will automate the Heidelberg workflow across both litho and digital printing.
Automation has taken in Plate to press technology where robots deliver the plate from the platesetter directly to the print unit.
Monz explains that the Boardmaster flexo press, announced last year, has been developed around automation with flying job changes possible, scanning of the plate and automatic setting of registration and pressures to minimise waste and through use of waster based inks, to have minimal environmental impact.
There would appear to be no immediate transfer of this learning to a litho press. Indeed, beyond saying that the high speed Speedmaster will feature at Drupa, he is quiet on specifics. However, he does sum up Drupa’s value in three words: “innovation, inspiration, networking”.
