SHELTON, Conn. -- Baldwin Technology Company, Inc., a leader in process automation technology for the global printing industry, today announced aggressive initiatives to strengthen its competitive position and to cut costs in a challenging market.

Baldwin President and CEO Karl Puehringer said, “As we have previously stated, the market for printing equipment faces significant challenges due to the current economic environment. We expect the continuing slowdown to affect our order rates for the remainder of the calendar year 2009. To offset a decline in equipment sales as a result of the slowing economy, we have been implementing an aggressive cost cutting program. While Baldwin initially implemented a restructuring effort in its second fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2008, we continue to take additional actions to mitigate the impact of a continuing weak market for printing equipment.

“During this fiscal year we will reduce our headcount by approximately 80 employees or 12% of our global workforce, mainly through the consolidation of our two facilities in Germany and capacity adjustments at our other manufacturing locations. In October, 2008, we announced a one-time restructuring charge with respect to the second fiscal quarter of approximately $0.7 million and expect to record a further one-time restructuring charge in the current third fiscal quarter of approximately $3.0 million, which, combined with compensation reductions and expense curtailments and other steps, will produce close to $12 million in annual savings in production and operating expenses.”
Puehringer further stated, “While printing equipment order rates for new presses remain slow, Baldwin’s after-market performance has not been impacted as severely. Baldwin has benefited from the recurring revenues of its growing consumables business, and the company is re-aligning its resources to take maximum advantage of emerging opportunities for its food packaging and graphic arts pressroom consumables business.
In addition, Baldwin has recently:


 - Received a $1.1 million order from The Hokkaido Shimbun Press, a major Japanese daily newspaper with a circulation of approximately 1.2 million. This is the 5th major order in the last 6 months for equipment on newspaper presses in Japan.
   
 - Further leveraged its global sales and marketing organization through additional strategic alliances by signing two private label supplier agreements with Nordson for UV dryers. Baldwin’s alliances now include agreements with Eltex (Germany), Falk (Germany), Nordson (UK), Prisco (U.S.), Robatech (Switzerland) and Thermal Care (U.S.).
   
“While the current market is very challenging, I am confident that our decisive steps to strengthen our market position and to control and reduce our costs will position us to remain financially sound and emerge as an even stronger company,” Puehringer concluded.