With two of the world’s biggest press manufacturers reeling from the economic downturn, KBA president and chief executive Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann has resigned, leaving only one member of the founding family still on the board.
Bolza-Schünemann (57) announced his immediate resignation “from all offices within the group” after the board’s March meeting had heard of substantial losses incurred by the sheetfed division in Radebeul near Dresden last year. The move will make way for personnel changes aimed at turning the division around.
Sheetfed press maker Heidelberg – which is a major shareholder in Goss International – is also looking to doiuble planned savings of 200 million Euros to 400 million by 2011, and shed “up to another 2500 jobs”. Chief executive officer Bernhard Schreier says the cuts will be in research and development, production, administration and sales. Investments will be scaled down and the production of packaging products will be concentrated at a single plant.
Helge Hansen (pictured) who has been chief financial officer since last month, has been appointed successor both as president and as head of human resources in Radebeul. Product development has been taken over by the executive vice-president for production, Dr Frank Junker.
Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann’s brother Claus (53) is now the sole remaining representative of the founding family on the KBA board.
Preliminary figures for KBA in 2008 show the impact of the collapse in global demand on the balance sheet: Sales fell 10.1% to 1,531.9 million Euros, and the order intake shrunk 19.7% to 1,241.5 million Euros.
A 100 million Euros profit by the web and special press division has been offset by heavy losses (180 million Euros) from sheetfed operations, with retrenchment costs driving pre-tax losses to over 85 million Euros.
The preliminary figures following the supervisory board’s annual audit meeting are an interim measure prompted by postponement of the financial statements two weeks ago from March 27 to April 30.
Having already cut its staff numbers by almost 400 since 2007, about 800 more redundancies at sheetfed production plants will bring the total to nearer 7000 by the end of 2009. Among operations doing better in less volatile sectors, is KBA-Metronic, which makes a press for printing multicolour images on electronic data storage media such as CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray disks.
Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann has been on the boards of the parent company and various of its subsidiaries for 22 years. Prior to joining the KBA board in Würzburg 11 years ago he was executive vice-president for engineering and development at Albert-Frankenthal in Frankenthal (Palatinate). From 1991 until its merger with the parent in 1998 he was president of east German sheetfed subsidiary KBA-Planeta in Radebeul, which was acquired shortly after German reunification.
Strong ties were forged in the years following the collapse of the GDR, when under his guidance Planeta evolved into the biggest engineering firm in east Germany and one of the world’s leading manufacturers of sheetfed presses. In 2000 Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann was appointed deputy president and in 2003, president and CEO of KBA, while retaining his remit as head of human resources and product development in Radebeul.
Accepting his resignation, KBA chairman Dieter Rampl thanked him on behalf of management and staff for his many services to the company and the print media industry.
“In a hostile economic climate such as this, when top managers’ sense of responsibility is a matter of heated public debate, we accept your decision with the greatest respect,” he says.
