Heidelberg plans to increase its sales by more than 50% in the next five years by developing new products and extending share in all divisions.


It hopes to extend its dominance in sheetfed and web offset, and become the biggest supplier of finishing kit and one of the top three digital press suppliers.


To achieve this it has restructured, replacing five worldwide regions with seven market centres, and its product business units with four solution centres. It hopes this will result in faster product development that better fits market needs.


The seven market centres are responsible for sales, marketing and service, including the sales of web and newspaper presses, which were previously handled directly.
The UK has become part of the UK and Nordic region, which is headed by Heidelberg UK managing director George Clarke.


The other regions are Germany and Switzerland, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Southern Europe and France, Asia Pacific, US and Canada, and South America.
Market centres will be supplied by four solution centres: Sheetfed, which includes pre-press, direct imaging and print production workflow; Postpress, responsible for all offline finishing; Digital; and Web, which includes newspaper presses and mailroom.


Heidelberg also released its figures for the year to the end of March, its strongest ever. Post-tax profits were up 13% to 170m, including a 36m one-off gain, on sales up 15% to 3.2bn.


It said this years results would be hit by the slowdown in the US economy, although it claimed it would outperform the rest of the industry. It also predicted that business would pick up in the second half, and that this would be seen in orders taken at Print 01 in Chicago in September.


At the show it will launch the NexPress colour digital press, the Prosetter violet CTP family and Metadimension 2.1 pre-press workflow (PrintWeek, 18 May).


Story by Barney Cox