The manufacturer said incoming orders were up €386m (£338m) or 16% to €2.757bn, although €140m of this was down to favourable currency exchange effects, while sales were up 14% to €2.629bn with €135m in positive exchange rates.

Asia Pacific - particularly China - and Latin America grew strongly across the year with 43.4% and 28% sales growth respectively while EMEA posted a 6.2% upswing and North America just 0.3% (although incoming orders for the region were up 21.7%).

The positive markets resulted in Heidelberg achieving a positive operating profit for the first time in two years of €4m excluding special items (-€130m 2010).

In the UK managing director Gerard Heanue said, "we were better on orders than the group as whole, up more than 30% against 16%, so we were extremely successful, while sales were in line with the group up 14%. So this year we generated a significant profit at an operating level."

Chief executive Bernhard Schreier said: "This once again proves that we have adopted the right strategy - competitive products and services, a strong presence in emerging markets, a commitment to less cyclical areas such as services and consumables, and an expansion of business with packaging print shops."

However its pre-tax profit for the year stood at -€143m (-€286m 2010), impacted by its high financing costs and paying down and restructuring its debt. The company said it had reduced its net debt by almost two thirds to €247m, which should further help its improved cashflow which swung to a positive €75m from -€62m in 2010.

Heanue said that debt reduction was achieved through a €400m rights issue and a high bond yield of €300m.

"It shows that our shareholders are fully behind our business model and are confident in our strategy," he said.

"The level [of debt] we have now is a good level. But we do have a major focus on reducing working capital - as an accountant you never give on reducing that."

Chief financial officer Dirk Kaliebe said: "Heidelberg has once again secured its medium to long-term financing. We have diversified our financing sources and made great strides in optimising the maturity profile of loans. Thanks to our comprehensive cost-cutting measures, we have also further reduced the operating break-even threshold as planned. This will significantly improve our earnings situation in the future."

The company continued to reduce its head count, with a reduction of 668 roles over the year, and introduced periods of short-time working at times of excess capacity. It wouldn't rule out continuing this in the current financial year.

However, it expects sales to grow, breaking through €3bn over the next two or three years, with Drupa 2012 expected to offer a sales lift, although no mention was made of the impact of adding Ricoh equipment to its portfolio. That line will however be reported separately within the equipment division and the company plans to shift up to 80 units this year, while in the UK "we've closed five orders in the first 10 weeks," said Heanue.

Growth in consumables sales in its services division "grew much more strongly than during the previous year" it said, which Heanue put down to a growing market share rather than a growing market.

The company said if the current conditions continued it would expect a net profit for 2012-13.