KBA Plans Short Time at Web Press Factories

With many customers postponing projects, over the past two months the volume of new orders for commercial and newspaper web presses has fallen well short of expectations. As a result capacity utilisation will be exceptionally poor next year at KBA’s factories in Würzburg, Frankenthal and Trennfeld. Management therefore sees no alternative but to extend short-time work to these west German production plants from January 2009, and is about to enter negotiations with the Federal Employment Agency. Alongside production workers the measures will affect all departments not directly engaged in market development and customer support. Having just completed a capacity adjustment in the summer that involved several hundred lay-offs at its web press production plants, KBA is unwilling to lose more staff who will be difficult to replace when the economy picks up again. Management is hoping that the mounting uncertainty induced by the economic recession will ease in the next few months, and that demand for presses will pick up again as a result.