KBA is to shut the Trennfeld, Germany, factory where 220 staff assemble newspaper and web press units and superstructures.

Employees at the factory, which was established in 1964, were told today that they would be offered new positions at the Würzburg factory, 25 kilometres away.

Chief executive and president Claus Bolza-Schünemann told an employee meeting the company – the world’s second-largest printing press manufacturer – was actively tackling the challenges caused by rivalling online media, structural changes in the printing industry and enormous leaps in productivity of new machinery in the significantly smaller global market for web-offset presses.

KBA had recognised the market slump early and over past years has carried out a raft of measures to adjust capacity and realign its production plants for sheetfed and web presses. This has also involved a significant reduction in personnel and the splitting of the plant in Frankenthal into two limited companies last year and opening them up to external contractors.

The foundry and other manufacturing cells at the plant in Würzburg are being increasingly used for supplies to the sheetfed offset plant in Radebeul near Dresden. In addition production of a new series of presses for printing bank notes has been transferred from the subsidiary KBA-Mödling AG in Austria to the main plant in Würzburg.

With no expectations of sustainable market recovery of any magnitude, Bolza-Schünemann says KBA is anticipating a smaller volume of new web press sales over the next three years. “The current plants are still too big,” he says.

“The decision made by the management and the supervisory board to integrate the Trennfeld plant was not an easy one. From an economical point of view, keeping two only partly utilised plants open does not make sense.

“Our web business can only look positively into the future when all employees, space and equipment available are fully utilised. As a result of the relocation and the closer proximity to construction and manufacturing activities it brings with it, we expect simplified processes and considerable savings.”

KBA expects to close Trennfeld at the end of 2013, on completion of the relocation.