Qingpu site driving Heidelberg growth in Asia

- Chinese factory facilitating growth in key emerging markets

 

- Exporting machines into wider Asian market

 

Heidelberg’s facility in Qingpu, near Shanghai, is allowing the German machinery manufacturer to establish a strong foothold in China, now its largest single market.

 

Heidelberg said it has developed according to plan and established an ‘excellent position on the Chinese market’.

 

The company assembles standard offset presses and folding machines in a production area of around 45,000 sq m (approximately 484,000 sq ft) in Qingpu, near Shanghai.

 

More than 750 four-color Speedmaster SM 52 presses, Speedmaster SM 74-4 with high-pile delivery models and Speedmaster CD 102 machines have been supplied since the site was established in 2005.

 

The 100th Speedmaster CD 102 press was delivered to a Chinese customer in January. More than 700 locally produced KHC 66 and 78 folding machines have also been installed at Chinese print shops.

 

The Speedmaster CD 102 is a bestseller on the Chinese market and Heidelberg has already sold more than 100 presses since production started at Qingpu in 2010.

 

A Speedmaster CD 102 four-color press recently started production at Xuriyuan Printing House, even though managing director Wang Zhen had initially questioned the quality of a press produced in China.

 

Testing on a challenging print job convinced him otherwise and the "Chinese" press now prints with the same flexibility and stability as the Speedmaster CD 102 imported from Germany, which is also housed in the pressroom.

 

Furthermore, Qingpu is exporting a growing number of standard presses in the 13.78 x 19.69in and 19.69 x 27.56in formats to the Asia-Pacific growth regions and South Africa.

 

The export rate here is around 10 percent and is continuing to expand, Heidelberg said. Numerous Speedmaster SM 74-4 presses with high-pile delivery and SM 52-4 presses have been sold to Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.

 

The first Speedmaster SM 52-4 produced in China, which was installed in Thailand, is used for the cost-efficient printing of short runs at Golden Medal Printing.

 

Bahagia Press, the leading company on the Borneo market in Malaysia, has opted for a Speedmaster SM 74-4 with high-pile delivery from Heidelberg owing to its superior quality and reliability, replacing a competitor's press.

 

Last year, Japanese print shop Maruri Printing from Gifu Prefecture also installed a Speedmaster SM 74 with high-pile delivery produced in China.

 

Heidelberg said the Qingpu site is an integral part of its network comprising the Wiesloch-Walldorf, Amstetten, Brandenburg, Leipzig, and Ludwigsburg sites in Germany, and the Nové Mesto location in Slovakia.

 

Heidelberg said it is the only press producer in Europe and Japan that operates its own production facilities in China, with almost 500 staff employed at the site, which currently manufactures around 1,000 printing units a year across all series.

 

This ensures that, even with a growing proportion of local suppliers, all processes and quality standards satisfy the global standards laid down by Heidelberg.

 

Stephan Plenz, member of the management board responsible for Heidelberg Equipment, said: ‘Every third machine sold by Heidelberg in China now comes from our production facilities in Qingpu. With the growth in exporting, we'll continue to unlock the high potential on the emerging markets.’

 

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