manroland sheetfed, the German printing press builder, announced today that it has concluded negotiations with its workers council over the dismissal of 77 workers. The company announced its intentions in September and those dismissed will leave the company by 30th November, 2012.

As part of the negotiations the dismissed employees have the opportunity of joining a government backed "transfer company", which provides 80% of salary for up to 12 months and assistance finding alternative employment.

A spokesman for manroland said "the heavy restructuring which took place in January was very much a rough cut. Since then we have been fine tuning our processes and although it is unfortunate to have to let more people go, with these fine tuning measures the business is now very efficiently structured and we do not anticipate any further headcount reductions in the foreseeable future."

The company also announced that it is closing its nearby Mainhausen factory, which carries out packing and final dispatch of the company's presses. The spokesman said the 2.9 hectare site will be sold for housing development in due course. Satellite offices in Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart and Leipzig were closed earlier this year.     

Packing and dispatch functions are transferring to the company's main location in Offenbach, where around 10% of the firm's machine tool inventory is being sold off to physically accommodate the move at the 11.3 hectare complex.

Going forward the manroland sheetfed group, which includes subsidiaries in over 40 countries, will employ around 2000 people world-wide, of which about 1000 are in Germany, including just over 100 apprentices.