The company said a 39% year-on-year upswing in orders, which was concentrated in China, but also apparent in other regions, affected both its sheetfed and web and special presses divisions, mostly in the second quarter of 2010.

Business in the UK, Spain and Scandinavia remained relatively weak with more activity in the B2 and smaller formats where KBA is less strong, but South East Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Russia, certain Western Europe countries, Eastern Europe, Australia and China were buoyant, and activity is slowly returning to the US, according to the company.

With total orders for the year now north of €500m (A$730m), KBA claimed it was on course to achieve its sales target of €1.1bn for 2010. It added that orders for its newspaper presses would be reflected in the third quarter.

An updated full-year forecast will be announced in KBA’s half-year report released on 13 August.

Dave Lewis, KBA Australasia’s general manager, sheetfed presses, told ProPrint that the order upswing was “generally reflected here” in Australia.

KBA has announced two major installations of Rapida 106 presses in Australia in the past few months, one at Percival Print & Packaging in Perth and the other at Brisbane-based Platypus Graphics.

Lewis said a third local Rapida 106 installation was in the pipeline, though would not reveal the customer.

The news follows a similar announcement this week by Heidelberg, which reported a 43% surge in orders for the first quarter of its financial year.

However, Heidelberg warned that it did not expect this trend to continue throughout 2010, citing Ipex and Brazil’s ExpoPrint as reasons behind the surge.

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