Baldwin Technology Company has announced what it has dubbed aggressive capacity adjustments, which will reduce the company’s worldwide workforce by 12 per cent leading to savings of $12m. Meanwhile the company has received an order from a Japanese newspaper, which is the fifth major order in the last 6 months for equipment on newspaper presses in Japan.
The $1.1 million order is from The Hokkaido Shimbun Press, for The Hokkaido Shimbun, which is a Japanese language daily newspaper with a circulation of approximately 1.2 million mainly in Hokkaido.Karl Puehringer, CEO of Baldwin says the market for printing equipment faces significant challenges due to the current economic environment. And says despite the recent order the company expects the continuing slowdown to affect order rates for the remainder of the calendar year 2009.
He says, “To offset a decline in equipment sales as a result of the slowing economy, we have been implementing an aggressive cost cutting program. While Baldwin initially implemented a restructuring effort in its second fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2008, we continue to take additional actions to mitigate the impact of a continuing weak market for printing equipment.”
Puehringer continues, “During this fiscal year we will reduce our headcount by approximately 80 employees or 12 per cent of our global workforce, mainly through the consolidation of our two facilities in Germany and capacity adjustments at our other manufacturing locations.
The company concludes it has benefited from the recurring revenues of its growing consumables business, and the company is re-aligning its resources to take maximum advantage of emerging opportunities for its food packaging and graphic arts pressroom consumables business.
