The Qingpu site of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) near Shanghai has helped to establish an excellent position for Heidelberg in China – unlocking the considerable potential of the Chinese market, which is now the companys largest single market.
The company now assembles standard offset presses and folding machines there on a production area of around 45000sqm (approximately 484,000 square feet). Over 750 of the four-colour Speedmaster SM 52, the Speedmaster SM 74-4 with high-pile delivery presses and the Speedmaster CD 102 have been supplied since the site was established in Qingpu in 2005. The 100th Speedmaster CD 102 press was delivered to a Chinese customer in January this year. More than 700 locally produced KHC 66 and 78 folding machines have also been installed at Chinese print shops.
Qingpu is also increasingly exporting standard presses in the 35 x 50 and 50 x 70 cm (13.78 x 19.69 in and 19.69 x 27.56 in) formats to the Asia Pacific growth regions and South Africa. Numerous Speedmaster SM 74-4 presses with high-pile delivery and SM 52-4 presses have been sold to Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. Customers rate the presses highly thanks to their excellent price-performance ratio, reliable productivity and quality, and comprehensive range of services.
Every third machine sold by Heidelberg in China now comes from our production facilities in Qingpu. With the growth in exporting, well continue to unlock the high potential on the emerging markets, said Stephan Plenz, member of the Management Board responsible for Heidelberg Equipment.
The Qingpu site is an integral part of the Heidelberg network comprising the Wiesloch-Walldorf, Amstetten, Brandenburg, Leipzig, and Ludwigsburg sites in Germany and Nové Mesto in Slovakia. This ensures that, even with a growing proportion of local suppliers, all processes and quality standards satisfy the global standards laid down by Heidelberg. Heidelberg is the only press producer in Europe and Japan that operates its own production facilities in China. Almost 500 staff are now employed at the site, which currently manufactures around 1000 printing units a year across all series.
The Speedmaster CD 102 is a bestseller on the Chinese market and Heidelberg has already sold more than 100 presses since production started in Qingpu in 2010. A Speedmaster CD 102 four-colour press recently started production at Xuriyuan Printing House, even though managing director Wang Zhen had initially questioned the quality of a press produced in China. Testing on a challenging print job convinced him otherwise and the Chinese press now prints with the same flexibility and stability as the Speedmaster CD 102 imported from Germany that is also housed in the pressroom. Xuriyuan is a medium-sized print shop with around 100 employees that offers its customers comprehensive solutions in commercial and packaging printing. All in all, the company works with three presses of various formats produced at the Wiesloch-Walldorf site.
HEIDELBERGER DRUCKMASCHINEN AG www.heidelberg.com
