The sale of Gallus Group by Heidelberg Druckmaschinen has not been completed after Swiss corporation benpac holding failed to make the purchase price of EUR 120 million.
The five sites and around 430 employees of the Gallus Group will remain with Heidelberg. Nothing will change for Gallus customers. Heidelberg will continue to handle sales and service for the Gallus portfolio, and its contacts will remain the same.
Heidelberg will now be examining various options for the corporate future of Gallus, and confirmed, Galus will continue on its path to boosting operating performance. With an independent setup and specific focus on its flexographic printing market, Gallus made good operational progress last year under the Heidelberg umbrella.
Irrespective of the Gallus transaction, Heidelberg is already benefiting considerably from the transformation program launched in the current financial year to further stabilize the company financially in the challenging Covid-19 environment and align it in a future-proof manner in its profitable core business.
Since March 2020, net debt has been reduced by more than EUR 250 million from a peak of EUR 390 million, and liquidity has been improved by around EUR 450 million. As a result of the accelerated M&A program, Heidelberg will generate proceeds in the mid-double-digit million EUR range from the transactions completed in December 2020 alone.
‘The market remains challenging due to the currently worsening Covid 19 situation,’ said the company in a statement. ‘Heidelberg is therefore systematically continuing its transformation course with the measures initiated for this purpose in order to create further financial scope. In operational terms, the third quarter of the current financial year saw a continuation of the upward trend in sales and incoming orders that has been ongoing since May 2020.’
Heidelberg continues to expect to achieve its targets for the financial year 2020/21.
