Manroland sheetfed orders hit decade high level

The manroland sheetfed business says order numbers for presses have hit a 10-year high, as print business around the world moved to re-equip their offset fleets following the 18-month Covid hiatus. 

Printers in the US and Europe are driving the demand, particularly for the B1 Roland 700 and the Size 6 Roland 900 Evolution series presses. The company says the advanced technology of the presses is seeing them win orders.

Separately, manroland sheetfed has hired the former Heidelberg head of large format sales Bernhard Schaff, with the aim of capitalising on the latter’s recent exit from the large format market. There are now just two large format players, manroland and Koenig & Bauer.

In Australia, Koenig & Bauer dominates the large format offset market, although there are two manroland R900 presses at GPI in Sydney and Melbourne, and an older one at Westrock in Richmond.

This year marks 150 years since the company began making sheetfed presses in 1871. It started in web presses 60 years prior to that. In 2012, the company went into administration and was split in two, with UK engineering business Langley Holdings taking the sheetfed arm. Sales of sheetfed presses were €215m last year.