Digital printing expert leaves Heidelberg role

Primefire 106: launched in 2016, canned in 2020
Primefire 106: launched in 2016, canned in 2020

One of Heidelberg’s most senior female business leaders has left the group following the “painful changes” to its product range made earlier this year.

Montserrat Peidro (pictured below), the senior vice president who headed up the manufacturer’s digital print business unit has left the group to take up a new position outside the industry.

She had worked at Heidelberg for just over four-and-a-half years, having joined just prior to Drupa 2016 as vice president of worldwide sales of digital products and software.

Peidro had previously spent 18 years working at HP.

She had also been general manager for the Primefire B1 sheetfed inkjet press line, which was dramatically canned in March along with Heidelberg’s VLF litho presses as part of plans to save €100m (£92m).

Peidro has returned to her native Spain and is now managing director and chief customer officer of cloud services business Also, which is in the process of rolling out its business model in that country.

Stefan Hasenzahl, Heidelberg head of product management, commented: “With the implementation of our new organisation earlier this year we have made clear that our focus will be strictly on customer benefit along the entire end to end process chain. This goes hand in hand with the concentration of our activities on the core portfolio which is based on equipment, software, services and consumables.

“In this context our Sheetfed Digital Print activities have been combined with our Sheetfed Offset activities. We strongly believe that this solution is in the best interest of customers since we can offer the best print solution for our customer’s individual business requirements.”

The Primefire was originally launched at Drupa 2016, where it had its worldwide premiere.