The company says the weak economic conditions worldwide have impacted on its business in all sectors, however the Asia Pacific region, which includes Australia, showed improvement in terms of incoming orders. At €172m, orders for the second quarter were around 15 per cent up on the previous year’s figure of €147m. By contrast, incoming orders in all other regions fell compared to the previous year.   

The company outlines that incoming orders of €534m in the second quarter were roughly on a par with the previous quarter, having stabilised at a low level since October 2008. The significant fall in incoming orders to €1.084bn in the first half of the year was also influenced by the high order volumes stemming from last year’s drupa.

Bernhard Schreier, CEO of Heidelberg says, “Developments within the individual regions differ considerably. Asia Pacific is showing signs of recovery, although they are not sufficient to fully compensate for the downturns in the other regions.“

He continues, “Incoming orders are bottoming out now, but we do not expect to see clear signs of improvement in the subsequent quarters of the current financial year. We can only expect to see an improvement in production values and capacity utilisation in the print industry when the economy as a whole shows signs of a  lasting recovery.

The low level of incoming orders led to a slight drop in sales in the second quarter over the first quarter, falling from €514m to €499m. In the first six months of the current financial year, sales amounted to a total of €1.013bn and were thus down around 31 per cent on the previous year.

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