Four months after he joined Koenig & Bauer, former Heidelberg packaging chief Christian Steinmassl has a new responsibility… looking after web and digital press segments at the company that was until recently an arch-rival.

Except that the ‘Digital & Webfed’ segment notionally no longer exists.

And after more than four decades on the executive board, Christoph Müller (64) has helped along the company’s restructuring plan by announcing his departure.

He steps down from the executive board at the end of this month and hand his responsibilities for the former ‘Digital & Webfed’ segment to Steinmassl, while continuing as an “executive advisor”.

Müller handed chief executive responsibilities for the segment to Philipp Zimmermann mid last year, to “focus more on the expansion of technologies and partnerships” in digital printing.

Steinmassl has already been given responsibility for parts of the new ‘Special & New Technologies’ segment since his arrival in December.

The restructuring announced last November is proceeding with a reduction of the number of business segments to two. Last month, Markus Weiss took over the ‘Paper & Packaging Sheetfed Systems’ segment where he succeeded Ralf Sammeck, who will retire in June.

Koenig & Bauer says Müller played a decisive role in the transformation from traditional gravure printing to modern high-performance digital printing. “It was not without challenges and reflected the balancing act between innovation and the necessary investments,” said a spokesperson. “Under his leadership, pioneering projects were initiated that have advanced the company in the areas of packaging and digital printing.”

The developments included collaboration with partners including Sealed Air, which “laid the foundation” for the development of the RotaJet digital press,  which serves both packaging and book printing as well as industrial printing for decor and beverage cartons.

“In addition, his long-standing network led to successful collaboration with HP, which resulted in the PageWide T1190, T700 and T500 products, with the acquisition of a stake in Celmacch playing an important role in the group's entry into direct corrugated board printing.

“These strategic alliances have sustainably expanded Koenig & Bauer's product portfolio and strengthened its market position.”

Chief executive Andreas Plesske announced the “D&W 2.0” reorganisation last May.

Despite the lack of newspaper or web-fed printing mentions when changes were announced last November, corporate communications and marketing director Dagmar Ringel told GXpress, newspapers could “certainly continue to rely on Koenig & Bauer as a partner”.

Pictured: Christoph Müller pictured in 2015, when Koenig & Bauer was enjoying a run on its Commander CL press design; at WAN-Ifra’s World Publishing Expo, where the talk was of “simplex inkjet”, Christoph Müller spoke of the need for “new business models for printers and publishers not happy with either what they get from print or digital publishing”. A union of offset and digital – “and I'm not talking about printheads” – was an imperative for publishers.