Heidelberg has agreed a deal to acquire the 35 sales and support activities of Manroland Sheetfed together with the associated 600 staff. This will mean continuity for the 3,000 Manroland Sheetfed presses around the world and the eventual full integration between the two businesses.
There has been uncertainty over service and support since the Langley organisation placed the Manroland Sheetfed business into administration. Press manufacture ceased at the end of May and this deal settles the big remaining question about what happens to users.
Now, says Heidelberg CEO Jurgen Otto says: “With this transaction, we are ensuring that the acquired Manroland business can continue to operate reliably. The combination of Manroland sheetfed’s service and spare parts business and its sales subsidiaries with Heidelberg strengthens our global role as a systems integrator and enables us to seamlessly ensure the supply of Manroland users worldwide. Together with our strong service and logistics network, we offer our customers a global range of service and spare parts.”
The Manroland brand will be retained for the foreseeable future at least, though how it will be incorporated into Heidelberg has still to be decided.
Heidelberg will acquire the parts and related IP. These will continue to be produced by Langley at Offenbach where a handful of related staff have transferred to Heidelberg. At some point it will be logical to move the parts to the highly automated World Parts Centre and to local organisations rather than running duplicate supply channels.
This will happen on a country by country basis and will be easier in some territories than in others. In the eastern Mediterranean, for example, Dynagraph for Printing handles Manroland’s sheetfed litho presses, but also MarkAndy label presses, Canon and Konica Minolta digital machines and so on. Others handle RMGT litho presses with a smaller format sheet than the B1 Roland 700.
The other question relates to the Roland 900 very large format press that Heidelberg planned to bring to market as the Heidelberg CX Speedmaster 145. The first of these is understood to have been completed in the Offenbach factory ready for delivery to Heidelberg. This is now up in the air.
The arrangement worked when the engineering could be made by the Offenbach factory with its lower cost of production. It seems that the model cannot work with Heidelberg’s overheads.
Heidelberg has acquired the rights and assets relating to this press and it would seem to need a VLF press in the portfolio to meet the requirements of major carton groups around the globe.
The way forward is under discussion, says Heidelberg. “The company is currently evaluating options for the production and further development of this system,” it says.
There will be plentiful opportunities to leverage Heidelberg’s strengths in supply to provide Sapphira consumables to Manroland users. In the longer term it will hope to replace aging Roland 700 machines with its own Speedmasters and to integrate the Roland presses.
Heidelberg sales and technology director David Schmedding adds: “This integration is the next logical step in implementing our strategy in our core business. With the acquisition of the global service and spare parts business for Manroland presses, we are offering print shops a seamless transition in the operation of their systems.
“Customers benefit from a significantly more comprehensive range of services, a reliable supply of spare parts, and innovative solutions from a single source. This creates sustainable added value for our customers worldwide.”
Heidelberg itself will gain a new revenue stream even without any new press and one that is understood to be profitable, as the factory is blamed for the losses that sparked the administration.
There will need to be training to enable Roland engineers to fix Heidelberg presses and vice versa. Details though will beed to wait until the deal is finalised in “the coming weeks, not months”.
Langley chairman and CEO Anthony Langley says: “The agreement with Heidelberg ensures continuity in service and spare parts supply while integrating the business into a global organisation that has the necessary scale and infrastructure to support Manroland users over the long term.”
One unwanted aspect to the integration could be a spur to production of grey market unofficial spares. These already exist for both press manufacturers. “It’s important for us that we are able to deliver the parts that are needed and to deliver on time,” says a Heidelberg spokesman. “And we have to convince customers that they should buy original parts and service presses using these parts.”
