It was announced that the sheet fed press operation of manroland based in Offenbach Germany is to be acquired by UK based engineering group Langley Holdings. Langley Holdings is a privately owned engineering group with one shareholder, its Chairman and Chief Executive Tony Langley. It employs 2,300 staff and has worldwide revenues of approximately $660 million with pre tax profit of $100 million. Langley will acquire more than 40 of manroland’s international sales operations. The sale is subject to agreement by the German cartel office.

At a press conference held in Augsburg on February 2, administrator Werner Schneider confirmed that the manroland name would continue at the two separate sides of the business. The Augsburg web offset business acquired by Possehl will become manroland Web Systems, while the sheetfed operation acquired by Langley will become manroland Sheetfed. A new UK company, Manroland Sheetfed Holdings, has been registered at Companies House. At the press conference the sale of the web office division was confirmed where 1,510 staff will be retained with 741 redundancies. It is understood that the size of the Offenbach sheet fed operation will be reduced to 824 staff with 947 posts being eliminated. Werner Schneider stated “Tony Langley is well known as a long term investor who acts strategically. We are convinced that a lasting perspective has been found for manroland’s sheet fed printing business.”

Tony Langley commented on the acquisition “we foresee very good economic prospects for manroland Sheetfed following the recent re-structuring. This is a world-class business with an excellent reputation and it’s production and research & development facilities are superb; everything one expects of the very best of German engineering.”