KBA’s Frankenthal Press Plant Celebrating Its 150th Jubilee

The ongoing transition from print to online media has hit demand for web presses much harder than sheetfed and special presses, which profit from rising print volumes in many threshold economies and a growing need for packaging and other media-independent products.

Over the past few years the proportion of KBA sales generated by web presses has plunged, and in 2010 sheetfed and special presses made a larger contribution to total group sales of some €1.2bn. The general consensus is that the web market is shrinking and in future will be much smaller. One reason is that presses are becoming ever more productive. This has affected KBA’s plants in Würzburg, Frankenthal and Trennfeld: between 2002 and the end of June 2011 the payroll was cut from 3,700 (excluding apprentices) to 2,583. The Frankenthal plant has seen the biggest cuts, particularly following the sale of all gravure business. Since 2002 the workforce has dropped from 1,361 to 656.