Heidelberg: A Year-End Review

The packaging segment has been a focus for Heidelberg during the past ten years, said Plenz, with the company investing in press automation, post-press, and very large format technologies. Turnover in this segment has increased steadily during that time frame, now accounting for 25 percent of its total.

The opportunity for growth in consumables was highlighted by Peter Tix, head of consumables. While the worldwide market for sheetfed consumables is about 2.5 times larger than sheetfed printing presses, Heidelberg’s share of consumables is about 4 percent versus about 40 percent for presses. At the heart of Heidelberg’s consumables strategy is its Saphira product line, which positions the company as a one-stop-shop for its customers.

In the digital printing segment, Heidelberg offers Linoprint C (Ricoh technology primarily for commercial applications) and Linoprint L (CSAT inkjet targeted for label applications). Heidelberg’s marketing plans for these digital color presses seem predominantly focused on its base of existing offset customers, rather than on printers that are exclusively digital. Linoprint models are being offered as a way for an offset printer to handle very small run lengths, while enjoying Prinect integration and Heidelberg color management.

Using Prinect technology to integrate Linoprint digital printers with prepress, offset, and postpress equipment and manage the entire workflow was a recurring theme. Demonstrations in Heidelberg’s Print Media Center (PMC) showed how its Web-to-Print Manager integrates with the Prinect Business Manager MIS to enable a seamless hybrid workflow for digital and offset printing.