Schneider told the German edition of the Financial Times that it may be easier to dismantle the company and sell it in parts and that talks with potential investors will begin within the next two weeks.

According to the newspaper report, the administrator wants to have new investors in place by the time the formal insolvency proceedings for the German printing press manufacturer begin on 1 February 2012.

Manroland filed for insolvency last Friday (25 November) after talks with an investor - later revealed to have been Swiss private equity firm Capvis - "failed on the home stretch".

In an official statement, Manroland said that there had been a "dramatic downturn" in incoming orders since mid-July.

Turnover at the manufacturer has more than halved from nearly €2.1bn in 2006 - the year Allianz Capital Partners acquired a 65% stake in the company - to just €942m in its most recent results.

Incoming orders have also declined dramatically over the past five years, falling from €1.9bn at 31 December 2006 to €976m at 31 December 2010.

Klaus Schmidt, senior vice-president of marketing and communications at rival manufacturer KBA, told PrintWeek that he was "not surprised" that Manroland had been forced to file for insolvency.

"We knew that at some point Allianz would stop financing," he said. "The core problem is printing presses is not a growth market: the market for newspaper and commercial web presses has shrunk 60%."

Paul Utting, chief executive of Wyndeham Press Group, which is one of Manroland's biggest web offset customers in the UK, added that the press manufacturers had been "a victim of their own success".

"There were too many press installations [in Europe] in the decade running up to 2008," said Utting. "That overinvestment created huge overcapacity and reduced margins for printers and the reality now is that printers are generally well-invested and there is still overcapacity, so there’s little demand – certainly in the UK – nor is there likely to be for the foreseeable future.

"The credit environment has also changed dramatically in the last decade – we’ve seen a complete tightening of credit and businesses of all types are struggling to raise finance to invest and even where there’s a will there’s often not the way.

"If Manroland don’t survive – and I very much hope they do – there will be a number of issues we need to deal with, not least the parts and service aspects of our dealings with them and obviously there are hundreds of companies in the same boat in that regard."

Schmidt added that a merger between either Heidelberg or KBA and Manroland was unlikely as it "wouldn't solve the problem" of overcapacity caused by the downturn in press orders and that service agreements would be the most viable targets for taking over.

"If at the end of the process there are service agreements with existing customers then we could do something perhaps," he said. "But we have no interest in acquiring say Offenbach. We have enough capacity already for both sheetfed and web."