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Corporate Strategy - Innovative Strength Secures Market Position |
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- Solution Provider and Comprehensive Supplier: Value Added for Customers
- Growth Primarily in Services, in Packaging Printing and in Emerging Markets
- Reducing Dependence on Cyclical Fluctuations and Foreign Currency Influences
Our top priority is to sustainably increase Heidelberg's corporate value. Our core expertise lies in the sheetfed offset printing process, including prepress and finishing processes as well. Our goal is to be the preferred partner worldwide for sheetfed offset print shops of various sizes and strategic alignments, providing them with everything they need from a single source in order to be sustainably successful in the market.
Maximum in Production and Investment Security for Our Customers
We offer our customers the highest level of both production and investment security, thereby supporting them in their business success - specifically:
- with the industry’s most dense service and sales network and highly qualified employees;
- through the digital networking of every step of the printing process, which makes it possible for our customers to significantly optimize their potential in production and management; and
- with our comprehensive consulting and service offerings for customers throughout the world, including financing and specialized training services.
Taking Advantage of the Potential in Various Markets; Reducing the Influence of Exchange Rate Movements
The print media industry in the industrialized countries is characterized by considerable vigor. The needs of final customers are on the rise, print runs are falling, delivery times are being shortened, and greater individualization of products and enhanced services are in demand. We also take the future requirements of our customers into account in our developments and our overall offerings. Our solutions ensure maximum performances in terms of print quality, speed, and reliability. Since these solutions additionally considerably reduce the production cost of print shops, they provide an incentive to invest in slack order times as well.
We intend to further increase our business volume in the emerging markets. We offer high quality standard printing presses with a low level of automation especially for the many emerging smaller commercial printing establishments in these markets, thereby laying the cornerstone for long-term customer relationships. We intend to expand our business in China in particular. We are the first and, so far, the only European printing press manufacturer to establish its own local manufacturing facility. We assemble small- and medium-format sheetfed offset printing presses and folders that are especially tailored to the particular needs of print shops in the Chinese market. We are vigorously expanding the share of local procurement. Expanding both production and purchasing in the non-eurozone serves to reduce the influence of exchange rate developments on our profit situation.
Reducing Dependence on Cyclical Fluctuations and Improving the Cost Structures
Business developments in the print media industry, in particular the advertising market, are dependent on the global economic situation. We are consequently strengthening the business units that serve to reduce our dependency on cyclical fluctuations. These include Heidelberg Services, the consumables business, and packaging printing in particular. In addition, we are continuing to improve the cost structure of the Group on an ongoing basis. Services are becoming increasingly important for the business success of print shops around the globe. Our innovative services, such as individually tailored service contracts as well as Internet-based remote services, help our customers to considerably reduce the costs of their printing presses over their entire life cycle and prevent equipment failure. We offer the quickest parts service in the industry as well as management advice, support in financing questions, comprehensive and unique worldwide specialized and further training offerings for the print industry, and used printing presses of tested quality. Moreover, we market a broad range of consumables under the ‘Saphira’ brand name. Saphira products are finely tuned for our systems, guarantee maximum output, and usually surpass industrial environmental protection standards. Because the sales of consumables are largely non-cyclical, we intend to rapidly increase this area of business, including via acquisitions. To a large degree, the packaging printing market is also growing independently of overall business developments. For large format printing, which is an important segment of this market, we have developed integrated, wholly networked digital production solutions that offer optimized processes ranging from prepress and printing all the way to the delivery of the printed output. Our highly productive Speedmaster XL145 and XL162 sheetfed offset printing presses with their large formats cover nearly three-quarters of the large format market.
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As at: July 2008
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