Manroland Sheetfed completes reorganisation

Manroland Sheetfed has completed its reorganisation following its sale to Langley Holdings with a small number of additional redundancies and the consolidation of its German sites.

The bulk of the restructuring happened in February, when Langley concluded a deal to buy the former sheetfed division of German press manufacturer Manroland out of administration.

In addition to securing the jobs of 824 staff at Manroland's Offenbach site, Langley retained more than 1,000 more across a number of other German sites and more than 40 overseas subsidiaries.

However, the remaining 947 posts at Offenbach were eliminated and now, as part of a "fine tuning" the company has agreed a further 77 redundancies with its workers council, to be completed by 30 November.

All dismissed employees have the opportunity to join a government-backed "transfer company", which pays up to 80% salary for up to 12 months and provides assistance finding alternative employment.

A spokesman for the company said: "The heavy restructuring which took place in January was very much a rough cut. Since then we have been fine tuning our processes and although it is unfortunate to have to let more people go, with these fine tuning measures the business is now very efficiently structured and we do not anticipate any further headcount reductions in the foreseeable future."

Manroland Sheetfed has also announced plans to consolidate its packing and dispatch facility, based in nearby Mainhausen, into the 11.3 hectare Offenbach site, where around 10% of the firm's machine tool inventory is being sold off to accomodate the move.

The 2.9 hectare Mainhausen site will be sold for housing development in due course. Satellite offices in Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart and Leipzig were closed earlier this year.

Following completion of the reorganisation, Manroland Sheetfed will employ around 2,000 people worldwide, of which around 1,000 are based in Germany, including just over 100 apprentices.