Heidelberg's post-press division has made its first-ever profit, according to the manufacturer's full-year figures for the year ending 31 March 2007.The headline results revealed revenues up 6% to £2.57bn (€3.8bn) leading to a net profit of £177.75m. The German giant intends to issue a dividend of 64p – nearly 50% higher than last year.
The company's order book increased 7% year on year, with a backlog worth around £675.9m as of 31 March. Heidelberg chief executive Bernhard Schreier said this would use up much of the company's manufacturing facilities for the first half of its 2008 year.
All markets showed strong growth in orders, bar the Asia Pacific region, which was hit by the Chinese government decision to stop waiving import duties for printing presses other than A1-format machines. The taxes add a quarter to the cost of presses imported into the country.
The big success story for the company, however, was the turnaround of its post-press division, which finally posted its first profit.
Orders jumped 9% and revenues almost 12%, generating a profit of £4.73m.
Schreier said new product launches and production improvements put the division into the black, after last year's £2.02m loss.
Drupa also featured strongly in adding to the company's upcoming product portfolio.
"We will be presenting numerous additional offerings and solutions at Düsseldorf that are set to further improve the effectiveness, efficiency and productivity of our customers' operations," said Schreier.
It will also target the packaging sector with a demo booth for the industry.
Alongside this, Heidelberg is to demonstrate new very-large-format presses capable of handling widths of 1,450mm and 1,620mm.
The company will open a new £29m, 35,000sqm factory for the XL 145 and 162 series presses at the Wiesloch-Walldorf plant in the next few weeks.
Schreier said that gunning for larger formats is a safe bet for the company, describing them as "relatively independent of economic developments", because larger formats increasingly lend themselves to package or even label printing.
The company set its guidance for 2008 with a target of net profits at 5% of revenues.
Source: printweek
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