It is planned that Ukraine, after Russia the second-largest country in Europe, shall in future be looked after by manroland's Sales & Service Partner ECS Print/HGS. Contract negotiations concerning this are currently taking place and both companies are confident that this cooperation will further consolidate their market position in a highly-competitive environment.

The branch office with a sales and service staff of around 15 has its headquarters in Kiev. Gerd Finkbeiner, CEO of manroland, believes this new partnership will bring more momentum to business activities in the region: "Our action radius will definitely soon be increased significantly. We will support ECS Print/HGS to the best of our ability since, in the economic situation we have at present, setting up a representative office including first-rate service is no easy matter even in a growing market."

Positive expectations

Germany has traditionally been one of Ukraine's most important trading partners with eight percent. The country became independent in 1991 and since 2000 has experienced a fluctuating but permanent economic upswing, with an average Ukrainian GDP growth of around seven percent. Growth has slowed down at the moment but the prospects of joining the EU in the near future are fueling positive expectations. An increasing number of foreign companies are coming to the country and investing in local firms or setting up branches, and the printing industry can only benefit from this. There are some 800 printing companies concentrated in the regions surrounding Kiev, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Odessa. In the sheetfed sector, manroland is well represented with an installed base of more than 250 printing units covering all models and formats. In the web sector, presses installed so far are in smaller but trendsetting printing companies. Web offset printing systems from manroland are printing for example in Kiev, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Lviv. manroland is in permanent contact with all the major printing and publishing houses for both newspaper and commercial printing applications. With the new representative office, this contact will be even better, closer and more target-oriented.