2011 was the commercial printing industry ’ s annus horribilis . Look at some figures : in 2006 the global market for offset printing equipment was about € 2.2 billion . In 2011 , following the collapse of the financial market this plummeted to € 700 million ( subsequently losing a further 20 percent each year ). Large publishing and printing houses stopped buying new equipment . The drop was too sharp for the machine manufacturers , and forced one of the best respected of them all , Augsburg-based manroland AG , formerly known as MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG , into receivership .

The company had been part of the MAN group until 2006 , when the Munich truck-maker sold its controlling interest to the Allianz private equity group which rebranded it as manroland AG . Following the winding up of the company in November 2011 , however , it was quickly restructured . The sheet fed business unit was sold separately , while the web offset division was purchased by the diversified Possehl Group and relaunched as manroland web systems GmbH . “ Since then we have followed the route of continuous adjustment to the market environment and have been very successful in that environment ,” Daniel Raffler avers .

In the contracted but still competitive environment the company is definitely doing well , commanding a market share in excess of 40 percent of the global market for web offset

32 December 2015

Manufacturing Magazine December 2015 | Page 32