Simultaneous to its results for the year to 31 March the group announced a three-year agreement with its workforce in Germany that will safeguard jobs and achieve savings of E100m (68m) a year by 2008.

Heidelberg had hoped to increase its like-for-like sales on continuing operations by at least 5%, but in the end only managed a rise of 3% to 2.2bn. "Even if the markets and the global economy did not exhibit the robust growth we had hoped for, particularly in recent months, the figures nevertheless show that our measures are beginning to take hold," chief executive Bernhard Schreier said.

The group achieved its aim to post net profits of at least "the mid- double-digit million euro range", making profits of 41.4m, a return of 1.8%. Losses in the post-press division were reduced from 12m to 1.4m.

Asia Pacific overtook North America as Heidelberg's second-largest market, with incoming orders from the Far East moving up 1% to make up a quarter of the 2.5bn total, while North American orders slipped to 19% (down 6%). The order share of the EMEA region increased by 4% to 42%.

Heidelberg UK managing director George Clarke said the British business did not have as good a year as it did in 2003-2004, with sales down 7.5% to 147m, although incoming orders increased by 5.5% to 163m. "The main reason was that various new machines including the long perfectors with PCS and the XL 105 have come into this financial year," Clarke said.

Negotiations with the group's 12,800-strong German workforce over the new efficiency measures were described as "controversial and difficult". From 1 May working hours will be extended by about 5%, and overtime payments will no longer be paid as a rule.

Heidelberg in turn has agreed that there will be no redundancies for operational reasons or significant relocations of production over the next three years, and the board and certain senior executives "are also playing their part in cutting costs by waiving their salaries to a comparable degree".

Story by Jo Francis