Offset press sales soar at Heidelberg

Global orders for Heidelberg presses virtually doubled in the quarter to June over last year, with the company signaling “a broad market recovery in virtually all regions.”

Orders in the June quarter shot up to €652m, boosted by a strong showing at ChinaPrint. Sales in the first quarter rose by a third to €441m from €330m in the prior year, with the order backlog up by 35 per cent to €840m from €605m.

The strong showing is consistent with rivals manroland and Koenig & Bauer, which have also seen strong gains in the June quarter, and are predicting more to come, indicating that offset press printing remains a stong part of the printing industry. More print is produced by offset that all other types of printing.

Heidelberg says China is now the world’s number one market for offset presses. Heidelberg says that given the marked uptick in demand – “especially for innovative new products such as the Speedmaster CX 104 universal press” – it is convinced it can continue building on the company’s market-leading position in China.

Rainer Hundsdörfer, CEO of Heidelberg said: “As demonstrated by our encouraging initial quarter of financial year 2021/22, Heidelberg is really delivering. Buoyed by the global economic recovery and the notable improvement in operating profitability, we are also very optimistic about meeting the targets announced for the year as a whole.”

Those targets include sales of €2bn for the year, compared with €1.9bn for the previous year. €1.9bn is the figure that Heidelberg says will become its break even point in the future, compared to the €2.1bn to €2.2bn pre-Covid.

The potential for sustained growth and increases in value is based primarily on opportunities in packaging printing, digital business models, business in China, and new technology applications.