It’s doing “better than the average”, four-fifths of business currently underway comes from the web and special press segment, and a sixth of it comes from the Asia-Pacific region. In a nutshell, that’s the importance of the local newspaper and commercial web market on which gxpress.net concentrates to German press maker KBA. The company says that after slack demand in the final quarter of 2008, the first quarter brought little relief. The group order intake of 219.5 million Euros, was down 40.7 per cent on the previous year, but was “better than the industry average”, largely thanks to KBA’s broad product range addressing both volume and niche markets. While orders for web and special presses were down 28.7 per cent, the knock-on effects of the financial and economic crisis caused demand for sheetfed presses to shrink by more than half. The impact on sales, which declined by 27 per cent was equally disparate: A “relatively moderate” nine per cent drop in web and special press – where production cycles tend to be much longer – contrasted with a plunge of 46 per cent in sheetfed. The group order backlog of 500.8 million Euros at the end of the quarter was much the same as at the beginning, but was 41.8 per cent behind the corresponding figure for the previous year. Web and special presses accounted for almost four-fifths of unfilled orders. KBA says savings in wage costs from short-time work at all of its production plants did not offset the revenue lost through slower sales, but a substantial reduction in personnel and material costs will come in coming months from implementation of scheduled “capacity adjustments”, for which provision was made last year. These entail extensive job cuts at the sheetfed factories. Cash flows from operating activities were positive, largely due to a substantial drop in trade receivables. Domestic sales were down 24.2 per cent, but exports also fell, from 84.1 per cent in 2008 to 83.5 per cent of total output. Sales for the rest of Europe – normally 50-60 per cent – dropped to 36.8 per cent, mostly because of downturns in the key markets of Italy, Spain and the UK. Asia and the Pacific contributed 16.7 per cent, North America 13.9 per cent, Africa and Latin America 16.1 per cent of group sales.