Four new manroland-owned marketing organisations will represent the German press manufacturer in South East Asia under new arrangements following the termination of the agency agreement with MAN Ferrostaal. The existing manroland Asia Pacific operation in Kuala Lumpur is being transferred to a new manroland Malaysia subsidiary, and new companies are being formed for Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. The move comes well ahead of the formal end of the arrangement with MAN Ferrostaal in September, and follows establishment of a similar organisation, manroland Australasia, with offices in Melbourne and Sydney. Managing director appointments are expected shortly, and it is understood that the four South East Asia subsidiaries will be combined under one leadership, with Australasia separate. Executive vice president sales Peter Kuisle told GXpress that manroland – “partly happy, partly not” with the former agency arrangement – had considered establishing its own direct operation before the surprise announcement of the sale of a majority stake in MAN Ferrostaal to Abu Dhabi’s state-owned International Petroleum Investment Company in January. “We have been working with sister companies in Ferrostaal for more than 50 years now, and there were synergies … but times have changed, customer demands have changed, and as Ferrostaal developed, the recent focus has been a different one,” he says. Both he and manroland chairman Gerd Finkbeiner (pictured left with Kuisle) had been introduced to the company through them. Kuisle says the company saw that in some markets, “their philosophy and strategy” was not so much in line with that of manroland. That a trading house business model was at odds with the press manufacturer’s desire to be “the main product” became more apparent. “We wanted to be much more representative, and this is the reason why we started a joint-venture service operation (manroland Web Services Australia) for the Australasian market 18 months ago,” he says. The older Malaysian operation was similar in concept. “We believe in being closer to the customer. Our focus is service first, so that we are working with our customers throughout the lifetime of their equipment, rather than just selling and installing equipment, and walking away. We want to be there for the whole life cycle, which is different to a classic trading house model,” Kuisle says. While “not everything was negative”, he says the company needed to look to the future: “Our strategy was to be directly represented in the major markets, and we could see that the ownership of Ferrostaal was going into another direction.” manroland will take “one step at a time” with the establishment of the new subsidiaries, focussing first on service and customer support. “You need quite an infrastructure to support the market and this is a challenge in terms of what you can afford. Our philosophy is to establish the company with service first, and then look at the printcom business, which is consumables as added value with knowhow and quality,” he says. “If we then find equipment that supports our own, we will look at offering it, but the focus will always be manroland.” He agrees that timing is “never right” to set up a new operation, but believes the changes may be easier than they would have been during a boom. “We needed to restructure in any case, because the markets are so tough, and this goes beyond that to re-establishing … and to the opportunities ahead. “We want to be ready with the new structure when the market picks up, so therefore I believe the timing is not too bad,” he says.