The German-based kit manufacturer said it was pleased with sales at the international trade fair, but regretted that it had failed to secure a number of multi-million Euro contracts.

As a result, the group order intake slipped by 2.4% to €708.8m (£564m) (2007: €726.3m). Following slack pre-Drupa demand, the volume of new orders booked by KBA’s sheetfed division also slipped by 2.4%, from €375.7m to €366.8m.

In the web and special press division, a double-digit leap in new orders for newspaper presses failed to outweigh softer demand for commercial web and security presses, resulting in a 2.5% drop in the order inflow to €342m (2007: €350.6m).

The group order backlog was trimmed to €844.6m (2007: €880.1m), while the volume of orders on hand for web and special presses, at €565.9m, was only marginally lower than twelve months earlier (€573.4m).

Group sales also fell by 17.5% to €656.1m for the first six months, 17.5% below last year’s above-average figure of €794.9m. Sales of web and special presses were down to €346m from €420.5m, a drop of 17.7%.

Sheetfed sales of €310.1m were also 17.2% below the €374.4m posted the previous year. This shortfall caused the operating profit to slump from €27.2m last year to €4.7m this year.

A financial loss of €2.3m was accompanied by a plunge in earnings before taxes (EBT) to €2.4m, from €25.6m the previous year. KBA closed the period with a net profit of €6.8m (2007: €19.1m) and proportional earnings per share of 42 cents (2007: €1.17). Sales and earnings will receive a boost from the increased shipments scheduled for the second half-year, the company claimed.

Elsewhere, the backlog of orders for sheetfed presses, shrank from €306.7m to €278.7m.

Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann, KBA president and CEO, said: "Future currency movements and energy prices, and their impact on the global economy, are notoriously hard to predict. Against this backdrop, meeting the annual group targets we projected in the spring, of sales in the region of €1.6bn and a pre-tax profit close to last year’s level, poses something of a challenge.

"But as long as there is a real chance to reach our targets, we see no reason to lower our sights. Any significant deviations will be made public without delay."