The company celebrated the official opening of the third construction phase at its Qingpu site near Shanghai in China. This expansion enables the company to serve the growing demand from Chinese print shops. The expansion extends the plants production area to some 45,000 square meters – a threefold increase in the space of just four years.
The company has been manufacturing small- and medium-format presses and folding machines in Qingpu since 2005. For the past year, the company has also been producing presses in the 70 x 100 cm (27.56 x 39.37 in) format class at this site, so it now covers all standard machines required by the Chinese market. The machines made there, primarily for the local market, comply with globally standardized Heidelberg quality criteria. In the future, the company is planning to gradually increase the proportion of such standard machines that are exported to neighbouring countries.
China is now our number one individual sales market and plays an important role in our business development. The demand for print products is growing all the time in this region and has more than tripled over the past ten years. Every third machine sold by the company in China now comes from Qingpu. Offering locally produced machines has enabled us to tap into additional customer segments in our industrys most important future market. Our strategy of taking full advantage of the potential in emerging markets is paying off, said Heidelberg CEO Bernhard Schreier at the opening ceremony.
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 globally standardized requirements at Heidelberg.
