June 4, 2008, Dusseldorf, Germany—Komori Corporation announced today the investment of Yen 10 billion in the latest phase of expansion of its flagship Tsukuba factory in Tsukuba City, Japan. Construction will start in September 2008 and, when complete in December 2009, the Tsukuba Plant will have effectively doubled in size to become the world’s largest press manufacturing facility.

 “We are experiencing continued strong growth in market share worldwide, particularly outside Japan, which is driving our investment to meet increase in demand for our sheetfed and web offset presses in the future,” said Yoshiharu Komori, president and chief executive officer of Komori Corporation.  “Response to the quality and flexibility of our new presses that fulfill the market’s need for automation, flexible configurations, quality, and return on investment has been phenomenal. Our aim is to achieve a market share of 30 percent within five years.”

The Tsukuba plant opened for full production in December 2005 to respond to the demand for its Lithrone S40 sheetfed series. Phase three of development will add a further 27,000 sqm resulting in a 60,000 sqm ultra modern site integrating manufacturing, assembly, testing, research and development, demonstration, and training into one highly automated and highly efficient operation. The manufacture of Web Offset and Banknote presses, previously handled by the Sekiyado Plant, will be moved to Tsukuba. Here Komori will centralize production of all its large format presses at one, state-of-the-art site.  As a result, manufacturing will be streamlined to further reduce lead times and cut production costs of Komori’s fastest-selling presses. Meanwhile, Sekiyado will focus on manufacture of component parts. Assembly of the popular Lithrone S29 and smaller format presses will remain at the Yamagata Plant.

A further investment of Yen 1.5 billion is being made in Komori’s new international Graphic Technology Center at Tsukuba, which will provide demonstration and training facilities across the full range of presses. Over the next few years, regional Komori Technical Service Centers will be established around the world, beginning in Prague and Kuala Lumpur later this year.

Steady international growth

Net sales have risen 9 percent in the last year from Yen 142 billion to Yen 155 billion. This increase is similar to year- on-year growth over the last five years, during which time sales turnover has grown by almost 65 percent. Komori has experienced impressive international expansion with exports contributing 73 percent of total turnover, compared to 66 percent the previous year. The America’s continues to be an important market, while European sales have increased from 24 to 33 percent of total. Other regions have also seen significant growth—rising from 18 percent of total sales in 2007 to 34 percent in 2008—with India, South Korea, ASEAN, and Oceana particularly strong.

Komori’s philosophy is to develop presses that deliver high standards of quality, enable flexible configurations allowing printers to produce added value products, and meet strict environmental standards.  As a result, sales of all Komori presses have been strong with a particular increase in web shipments where the trend is towards 32-page formats. Companies often complement their 16-page web presses with 32-page Komori webs and the ability to choose from a wide range of cut-off options has proved very popular.