Heidelberg to raise all prices immediately

Paper is not the only price rise printers are having to contend with, as the world’s biggest press manufacturer Heidelberg flags increases across its range, citing many of the same reasons.

The company says that in order to cushion the “disproportionately sharp rise in material, logistics and other procurement costs” it will be “moderately” increasing the prices for its equipment business, with immediate effect. Price rises will not be uniform, varying from product to product.

It says the adjustment is being made in an economic environment of rising demand and costs for raw materials, and is a “necessary step” in order to continue offering customers “innovative solutions and first-class service”.

"The current price development of raw materials shows an unprecedented upward momentum," said Rainer Hundsdörfer, CEO of the company. "Primarily due to the high demand from China, as well as the global megatopic of electromobility, procurement costs have risen significantly in the short-term. In recent months we have exhausted all possibilities to avoid an imminent price increase.

“We want to grow together with our customers and continue to be a reliable partner to them in a changing market environment. The moderate price increase that is now necessary will allow us to further expand our innovation leadership, and is therefore also an investment in the future."

Heidelberg says the focus is on the customer and the requirements to optimally develop and utilise their businesses’ potential through technologies, innovative solutions, and with new business models. With a view to the decisive factors, such as process optimisation and intelligent, operator-independent productivity, Heidelberg offers the smart print shop.

To this end, all Speedmaster models in small, medium and large formats are now equipped with the new Push-to-Stop functions and a cloud connection as standard.

The company says this means that all customer groups can enjoy the steadily growing range of cloud-based software solutions, and also benefit from future developments. It says innovations in the field of intelligent assistance systems and AI demonstrate what is already possible today, and where developments will go in the coming years.