The company forecast job cuts earlier this month despite posting a profit in its third quarter figures. Those figures revealed a “slump in demand in key markets such as the US”, with the company citing a 15.8% drop in new orders for sheetfed presses as “particularly painful”.

“With many customers postponing projects, over the past two months the volume of new orders for commercial and newspaper web presses has fallen well short of expectations,” the company said in a statement. “Management is hoping that the mounting uncertainty induced by the economic recession will ease in the next few months, and that demand for presses will pick up again as a result.”

The company added, however, that it “cannot exclude the possibility of further retrenchments” and that the cuts will affect “all departments not directly engaged in market development and customer support”.

KBA has only just completed a “capacity adjustment” that saw several hundred jobs lost in its web press production operations.

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