KBA targets return to ‘sustainable profitability’

KBA said its realignment is designed to suit the changing global press market. The worldwide market for sheet-fed presses, for example it said, has been halved over the recent years, and the market for web presses has contracted by around 70 percent. This downturn has been led by ongoing structural changes in the commercial print market. Lasting reversal of the slump in web press business is not to be expected, and experts are also predicting stagnation at the current low level for sheet-fed business.

Sustained growth is only discernible in the digital and packaging segments, and in certain special markets, KBA said.

Against this background, KBA has used recent months to develop a corporate strategy under the heading "fit@all", with a series of measures to strengthen the long-term competitiveness and profitability of the company.

Alongside the necessary adaptation of core business activities to the changed market situation, growth potential for KBA was a central theme.

KBA president and chief executive officer Claus Bolza-Schünemann said: ‘Swift and radical restructuring is intended to facilitate our development into a decentrally organized and highly flexible press manufacturing company, which, complementing its core business, is active above all in profitable niche markets.

‘With this decision, we have laid the foundations for sustainable realignment and interesting future prospects. The essential basis, however, is initially consolidation of our core business activities.’

The new concept sets out an objective to establish divisions with clearly defined profit responsibilities for sheet-fed and web presses, special applications and manufacturing.

The division for special applications include KBA’s metal decorating arm MetalPrint, security presses and the activities of the recently acquired companies Kammann Maschinenbau and Flexotecnica, which produces web flexo presses for the flexible packaging market.

The concept also includes measures targeting structural and process optimization within the sheet-fed offset division. In the web press division, activities are to be transferred to a business model based on labor flexibility.

A revised location concept for the overall group, where selected production tasks are to be relocated, will result in personnel adjustments at the five European locations in Würzburg, Radebeul, Frankenthal, Germany, Mödling in Austria and Dobruška, the Czech Republic.

It is expected that between 1,100 and 1,500 jobs will be affected at group level by these measures.

Bolza-Schünemann concluded: ‘We have made some far-reaching decisions for KBA today. They will also be accompanied by painful cuts for the workforce. It was not easy for us to make these decisions, but they are unfortunately imperative for the future sustainability of our company.

‘We should see the first fruits of these changes in 2015, and a return to sustainable profitability in 2016 at the latest.’