Offset Printing

“Printing press engineering has a future – albeit on a different level”

Wednesday 12. November 2014 - Habasit GmbH from Eppertshausen in the south of Hesse is the second largest of the 34 subsidiaries of the Swiss company Habasit AG.

It manufactures conveyor belts, drive belts, timing belts and plastic modular belts. Printing and paper technology manufacturers are among its major customers. Thomas Reibstein is head of sales in this segment. He has worked for the company as an engineer for nearly 30 years. Talking about that, he looks back on the success factors and the future of printing.
Mr. Reibstein, could you please give us a short survey of Habasit?
Thomas Reibstein: With pleasure. Habasit was established in Basel in Switzerland in 1946 by Fernand Habegger and his wife Alice. The name is a neologism of Ha-begger, Bas-el as well as -it, the ending of Bakelit from the plastics world. Plastics are the heart of our business. Habasit develops, manufactures and sells conveyor belts and drive belts of all kinds you can think of, for instance, also for checkouts of supermarkets or luggage scanners.
Which role does printing and paper technology manufacturing play?
The printing and paper segment has been of great importance in the history of our company. Other segments, however, have been growing much more dynamically over the last 15 years, e.g., the food sector, the fully automated production and packing of food.
What’s the situation in the traditional printing market?
We all know the development: Stagnant to declining. However, this will continue to be a large and important market and will assert its right to exist. Personally, I do not expect that the book or newspaper will vanish. There is, however, a shift as regards their importance. The e-book and the internet will continue to reduce the demand for printed products. We will no longer reach the level we had a few years ago. In the printing machinery sector, digital printing is growing more dynamically than the analogue methods. This has impacts.
Which?
Nowadays, our customers work with print runs like with Harry Potter very rarely. Their machines must be able to produce just one copy. For us, this is a change – not a restriction. Being a supplier, we are not active at the printing machine, but in its environment. This begins with belts in the folder and continues to post-print processes: everything that is transported, brought together and bundled can be conveyed by our conveyor and machine belts. As a rule, the belts have a width of 50 to 80 cm, the straps of approximately 20 mm; several of them are running side by side. Our drive belts are also used in printing technology – i.e., flat belts that transmit driving forces. In addition, we supply timing belts on polyurethane basis for conveyor technology and robust, modular plastic chains that are in great demand in the field of packaging.
Habasit AG invests eight percent of its sales volume in R&D. What is being researched?
Our belts and straps are composite materials consisting of different plastic materials, textile intermediate layers, bonding agents, paints. There are straight belts, curved belts or spiral
belts – and dozens of different surface structures. Strictly speaking, there is nothing that doesn’t exist. Our developing engineers must keep in mind that it must be possible to produce belts and straps in reproducible quality. For that, they can draw on far more than 30 different production lines with widths of up to more than 4000 mm.
Habasit is growing. What’s the reason for this success?
Our business is strongly diversified. Ranging from the treadmill in the fitness studio to belts of checkouts in supermarkets and conveyor belts in automobile manufacturing or beverage filling technology. In addition, we focus on highly specialised technical marketing. A test was carried out to unite the marketing of belts and straps with drive technology of our fellow associate Rossi…
… and why was it only a test?
Previously many machinery manufacturers had design and construction departments with experts who were just as familiar with our product world as we are. There are hardly any of those left. The customers expect that we know exactly what they need and then provide them with the suitable solution. Furthermore, the range of belts and straps on offer is so wide now that one expert alone can hardly know the total market.
Back to printing and paper. Does Habasit still make investments despite the stagnation?
We are consistently improving our products. Above all, when our important customers from printing technology manufacturing give us a signal that there is a demand. This happens regardless of the discussion about the future of the book. In the run-up to the most recent drupa, we joined forces with a leading bookbinding machinery manufacturer to develop a timing belt solution for the exact positioning of book covers that has found wide acceptance in this field, even though the resulting business was rather modest.
So investments as usual?
Of course, there is some caution on the part of our customers from the printing and paper industry. Nevertheless, they make investments for the future. The future market will differ from that of ten years ago. But this is no reason for burying one’s head in the sand.
But?
What’s important is to observe successful concepts and to learn from them. For instance, the clear tendency towards centralisation in the printing market. Take, for example, Druckzentrum Rhein-Main. There, several printing houses have pooled their resources, built a completely new printing house where they focus on newspaper printing. This works. A clear focus. A clear orientation as regards the installed machinery. For me, such focused business models offer good chances for printers, printing technology manufacturers and for us as a supplier too. Times are changing. But the printing market is and will remain an interesting market.