Sheetfed press manufacturers are finally enjoying the rising economic tides, with all producers reporting growing sales in recent months. After years of reducing capacity to cope with falling sales volumes, the rise in orders is starting to test capacity. For Heidelberg’s stand-in CEO Dirk Kaliebe (while CEO Gerold Linzbach recovers from illness), while the good times may not be back, the quarter shows that “restructuring is over and in the future we’ll be refocusing our attention on managing our growth”.
For KBA this effort requires special measures to cope. “Completing the raft of existing orders on time poses a substantial challenge,” the company says. The drive has come from the packaging sector and from printers looking for highly automated presses. KBA also says that it has been successful in opening new customers to the benefits of its presses.
Sales in the sheetfed division rose to €239.0 million in the first half of the year, generating an Ebit of €3.8 million compared to sales of €234.7 million and a loss of €8.4 million at the Ebit level in 2014. The success of Print China 2015 exceeded all expectations, it says.
However, the consolidated sales showed a decline for the first six months of this year compared to last thanks to a step drop in sales for web presses. This has been balanced by a rise in incoming orders to €607.5 million (€456.0 million).
There are hints that KBA will be strengthening prices to manage the incoming orders believing the levels of automation and features offered on its sheetfed presses set them apart from rivals. The period also saw a second order for an inkjet press for the decorative sector, this for a 2.25-metre wide machine.
Manroland Sheetfed has also declared that its factory in Offenbach is working at its current capacity to manage incoming orders. This is despite a 15% fall in sales of German-made presses during the first five months of 2015. Orders says the organisation are up 6%.
Heidelberg in Q1 figures is enjoying the growth in orders, likewise pointing to the success of Print China in generating sales. It has also received a €100 million a year boost to service revenues from the acquisition of PSG, the distribution network for Europe.
Sales in Europe were up at €244 million (€173 million) and incoming orders at €274 million (€230 million). “The British and Italians made particularly strong contributions to this growth,” the Heidelberg report notes.
Overall orders rose to €703 million (€588 million) helped by the Chinese exhibition and by PSG. There was also an exchange rate impact to sales growth to €563 million in the first quarter.
Komori’s orders in hand are also at their highest for a number of years, even if incoming orders from Europe are currently below last year’s level. However, this comes on sales growth in Europe compared to last year. For the first quarter of the financial year, sales to Europe were €35 million compared to €22 million for 2014.
Orders for its sheetfed presses were 20% higher than a year ago, with the growth led by printers in Japan. While it recorded only a marginal profit for the first quarter, Komori has performed better in financial terms than its German competitors during recession.
Now all press producers are turning their attentions for Drupa 2016, which falls in the equivalent quarter in the next financial year.
Orders have increased for all sheetfed press manufacturers, causing production bottlenecks for some. However, the current level of business is still well short of the peak in 2007.
