The owner of Manroland Sheetfed press Langley Holdings has posted sales for the first half of 2016 at the same level as 2015, but says post-drupa press sales will ramp up the figures in the second half.

Langley increased pre-tax profits by a quarter to €48.9m up from €37.9m for the six months, on sales which were stable at €417.1m. Manroland Sheetfed contributes around ten per cent to the Langley diversified engineering empire

Group operating profit for the period was €48.1m, up from €37.1m in the same period last year.. Forecasts for the full-year result predict an improvement of six per cent on 2015 with pre-tax profits expected to reach €112m on sales of around €930m.

The press division Manroland Sheetfed went through an expected slow-down in orders ahead of drupa but says this was brought back to forecast following drupa, with the Offenbach manufacturing centre ‘optimally loaded from backlog in the first six months’. Profits in the division were in line with expectations. 

Langley says its German printing consumables business Drück Chemie, acquired in 2014, was trading in line with expectations and was ‘exceeding the company’s benchmark minimum 20 per cent return on capital employed’.

Earlier in the year Langley said he had already got his money back from the Manroland Sheetfed acquisition less than four years after rescuing the business, which collapsed over Christmas 2012. He described the business he bought as a ‘lumbering leviathan’ but said he had now created an efficient business with break even at a fraction of previous levels.

Manroland Sheetfed strategy today is to focus on existing customers, both for new sales and optimising service levels.

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