Despite the difficult economic climate and a clear deterioration in the business situation in the second half of 2008 – characterized by a declining order volume and strong price pressure – the manroland Group achieved an operating result (EBIT) of 52 million Euro in the 2008 fiscal year (previous year 125 million Euro). The Return on Capital Employed (RoCE), one of manroland’s most important control parameters, was almost 20 percent.

Sales last year only dropped by 11 percent to 1,727 million Euro. Export share was around 80 percent. At the same time, manroland further expanded its service business which includes printservices: services and spare parts; and printcom: pressroom products and consumables. This contributed to an EBIT margin of 3 percent.

Altogether in the 2008 fiscal year, manroland booked 21 percent fewer orders than in the previous year and order intake declined to 1,396 million Euro. The company has started the current fiscal year with an order backlog of 701 million Euro.

Not counting sub-contracted staff and trainees, as at 31 December 2008 manroland employed 8,656 persons worldwide, around 84 percent of these in Germany.

“2008 was a difficult year for manroland and the entire industry. However, the crucial challenges are yet to come. The package of measures we implemented in January 2009 to safeguard our future as well as our marketing campaign will make a big contribution to us coming out of the crisis stronger than before,” says Gerd Finkbeiner, Chairman of the Executive Board of manroland.

The package of measures includes trimming 625 jobs in indirect functions at the production sites to be completed by mid 2010. In addition, the Mainhausen factory will be closed and the product lines assembled there will be integrated into the main sheetfed press factory in Offenbach. Also in the global Sales and Service Organization, comprehensive efficiency enhancing programs were already implemented.

A marketing campaign was started at the same time based around expansion of the services and system components business, as well as successful placement of groundbreaking products in the field. Some examples are the autoprint technologies for fully automated newspaper production, the press solutions for long-run magazine and catalog printing (LITHOMAN), and value-adding components in the sheetfed sector such as cold foil laminating with the ROLAND InlineFoiler and the DirectDrive technology.