HEIDELBERG SEES 2ND HALF SALES SURGE

The world’s biggest offset press manufacturer, Heidelberg, says it is anticipating that the second half of financial year 2024/2025 will be strong, with its factories now running at full capacity.

Both packaging and commercial sales increased, with packaging press orders running at double the growth of commercial presses. The sales surge is reflected in this part of the world, Savas Mystakidis, managing director of Heidelberg Australia New Zealand, said, "ANZ has also had a great year, with numbers across the board being the best we have seen for the last three years."

The company’s optimism for the second half is based on incoming orders in the first half, which included drupa. Heidelberg has a high order backlog of €953m, with strong incoming orders in the first half of the year, which were 7.4 per cent up on the previous year, at €1.2bn.

Heidelberg says its sales of €915m in the first half, down from €1.1bn, were within expectations, due to purchasing restraint ahead of drupa, as print business owners waited to see what the company would be launching at the big show.

New Heidelberg CEO Jürgen Otto said, "Heidelberg is starting a very strong second half of the year. We are now ramping up the utilisation of our production capacities so we can work through our order backlog in the third and fourth quarters quickly and profitably.

"The forecast sales volume for new machines has already been almost entirely met with orders, and our production operations are running at full capacity. We can be confident that we will achieve our targets for the year."

Heidelberg is still particularly strong in and around China. Incoming orders in the Asia Pacific region recorded the clearest growth in the first six months of the current financial year, increasing by approximately 10 per cent.

Compared to the same period of the previous year, the packaging solutions segment was able to increase incoming orders in the first half of the year by around 9.7 per cent to €675m, contributing approximately 53 per cent to the total volume. Megatrends in the packaging market are fuelling the growing demand for packaging that is both sustainable and high-quality.

The company also anticipates further growth opportunities in China due to its location benefits. In the print solutions segment, incoming orders rose in the same period by around 5.5 per cent to €594m.