Open house at the Heidelberg showroom

Heidelberg will no longer run offset presses at its Melbourne showroom, instead sending prospective customers to other client sites or overseas.

The manufacturer said that by ending showroom demonstrations of major offset equipment and selling off its presses, it will save more than $250,000 per year and give clients a better technical experience.

Richard Timson, who has just taken over from long-time ANZ managing director Andy Vels Jensen, told ProPrint that Heidelberg had been spending up to $750,000 year to run the showroom at its Melbourne headquarters due to installation, staffing and real estate costs.

The Heidelberg showroom had previously been home to cutting-edge machinery, including a six-colour Speedmaster XL 105 running its Autoplate XL simultaneous plate change and Inpress Control colour management technology.

It also housed a 10-colour XL 105 perfector, saddlestitchers and Kama foiling and diecutting machines at various times.
Timson said the remaining stock includes a six-colour Speedmaster XL 105 with coater, folders and full-size guillotines and cutting equipment.

Once the remaining equipment is sold, clients will be taken to local or overseas sites where they will be able to see the presses in action, he said.

"With the high cost of running a showroom and setting up equipment we get much better value for money if we take clients to other clients who are running the equipment they want to see," he said.

"I think our clients should be impartial [to the change] and our experience in recent years is that clients enjoy going to the factory and seeing it live and speaking to the production manager."

Timson said the new policy had been partly driven by overseas experience and partly driven by budget constraints.

Heidelberg withdrew from PacPrint13 to save money, as the global manufacturing giant downsizes to meet falling demand for offset presses.

The last of the offset equipment should be sold by about March 2013, said Timson. However, he added that the Notting Hill showroom would still be used to demonstrate smaller items, such as Ricoh digital machines, platesetters, workflow systems and complementary equipment like Polar guillotines.

Timson said Heidelberg would redesign the showroom to make use of the extra space and that the company had no plans to relocate.

He also told ProPrint that his dealings with printers over the past two or three months suggested that activity was picking up.

"My feeling is that the market is getting to the bottom point where we can look forward to a brighter future," he said.

"I think we [the industry] have done most of our cleaning out around the country."