The company announced incoming orders for the quarter to 30 September were pegged at €472.8m - second only to its record 2006 year - boosting orders for the first nine months to €1.15bn, up more than 15%.

However revenues for the nine months rose by just 1.8% to €785.7m and for the quarter were only marginally up at €276m, below expectations. This was impacted by shipping delays, which meant that some of these sales will be booked into Q4. It also revealed lower profit margins, down from 27.1% to 22.5%.

And despite the success of higher margin niche products, which boosted order volumes at the web and special presses division by 26.8% over the nine months, the delays caused a sales slide of 8.9% to €388.3m. And while sheetfed rose 14.9% to €397.4m, investment in new products for Drupa dented profitability with the group posting a pretax loss of €26.6m.

Export levels sank to 84.6% after a surge in domestic sales. Europe too benefitted from a 21.4% rise in sales. The US remained sluggish and APAC sales were marginally up. However sales in Africa were disrupted by the conflicts there nearly halving, although at 11.4% (including Latin America) this is now closer to their historical share of group sales.

In the UK, managing direct Christian Knapp said that while order levels have remained consistent issues such as difficulties for customers finalising financing had led to delays and put pressure on margins, making it less likely the division will post a pre-tax profit.

"Still, we're expecting a busy Q4 in the UK, and looking forward I'm optimistic. There's now a high level of interest, and there are positive signs such as our consumables business which is now producing some nice results for us," he said. He added that the Express Newspapers installation at Luton remains on track to start running next summer.

The group too expects a big lift in sales for the fourth quarter but expects to miss its target, and sounded a note of caution in the run up to Drupa that potential customers may hold off making purchasing decisions before then.

It said it had already demonstrated a number of these new products, including a version of its Rapida 105 based on the same platform as the higher end 106, and a lower end Commander CL four-high web offset press.

Staff numbers were marginally up year on year at 6,446, although following restructuring at its web press facilities, this is expected to drop to around 6,000.

The group expects to post a moderate lift sales for the year and remains confident of a small pre-tax profit, although is less confident of achieving an improvement to last year's €15.3m because of higher costs associated with its web facilities and a potential market slowdown.

Incoming president and chief executive Claus Bolza-Schunemann said: "Nonetheless, there is a good chance that KBA will be the only major press manufacturer to post a pre-tax profit after interest for the third year in succession."

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