German press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer says strong security business and more orders in packaging printing has boosted its order intake by 17.2% to €705.3m in the first half of 2018.
Cash flows from operating activities rose substantially over the previous year, from minus €20m to €17.4m.
“Substantial growth was achieved in large-format cardboard printing,” says president and CEO, Claus Bolza-Schünemann. “As the world market leader in folding carton printing, we are benefiting from heightened capital spending of the international packaging printers.
“In addition to our printing, finishing, coding and postpress solutions for cardboard, banknotes, cans, glass and hollow containers and other products, we are particularly focusing on corrugated board and flexible packaging.”
With order intake reaching a "particularly high" €454.4m in the second quarter and the order backlog rising to €805.8m at the end of the first half, the Koenig & Bauer Group is on track to meet its targets for 2018, the company said in a statement.
Despite the encouraging growth in new business in flexible packaging, orders in Digital & Web (€84.7m) were slightly down on the previous year (€85.7m) due to fewer orders for newspaper web presses and services. In addition to the market-entry costs for corrugated and flexible packaging in particular, earnings before tax was “significantly burdened” by the decline in revenue from €68.3m to €55.8m.
“This was materially due to the decline in revenue from digital printing presses as a result of subdued demand,” said CFO Mathias Dähn. “However, we see significantly greater short and medium-term potential in the large corrugated and foil printing markets, which are expanding at above-average rates.”
Earlier this week, Heidelberg said high demand for its new pay-per-use subscription model and the launch of the Primefire digital press had boosted incoming orders in the first quarter by 6% to €665 million, with the order backlog growing by 18 percent to €714 million.