Nela has picked up service and know-how from Barenschee following the newspaper plate systems specialist’s insolvency, formalised last month.

Nela Brüder Neumeister gains exclusive rights to technical know-how and assumes worldwide technical maintenance and service activities for the failed Barenschee Systemtechnik from this month. Barenschee service manager Detlef Brandes has joined Nela as system integration project manager.

Nela president Frank Neumeister says the arrangement will mean the approximately 250 user sites worldwide can get service, systems upgrades and extensions. “The knowhow of our experienced technicians and the size of our international service groups, together with the right to access engineering drawings and software databases, are the key for successful partnerships,” he says.

Barenschee had mainly focussed on the difficult newspaper markets in central Europe, the UK and British Comonwealth, while Nela’s activities were more broadly based across commercial web and sheetfed printing as well as newspapers. A change of ownership and management at Barenschee two years ago failed to solve problems and the company filed for bankruptcy effective April 30, 2013.

Neumeister says the current tendency towards concentration is “an economically inevitable result” of the overall consolidation process among suppliers of the printing industry.

Nela has made a series of investments in Germany and North America, and is active through its ‘vision inspection systems’ division as a manufacturer of optical inspection systems for rubber, ceramic and sintered metal parts, leveraging its core competence in optical inspection paired with control and automation technology.