Swissprinters closes Renens site
Swissprinters plans to concentrate its Swiss web offset business at a single production site in Zofingen. The Swissprinters Lausanne operation in Renens is to be transferred to a new constellation at the end of 2012.
With the planned exit at its printing site in Renens, Swissprinters is pursuing the path of consistent consolidation and concentration on industrial web offset production, as the company writes in a statement on Thursday. Discussions are being held with interested parties for the transfer of the printing activities to a new partnership, which will reach decision-making stage in the near future. A contract is already ready to be signed with a leading printing company in the Lausanne area, which provides for the takeover of the sheetfed offset division and part of the workforce. Any measures will be subject to legal approval and will in any case be carried out in compliance with the rules of social partnership.
Persistently unsatisfactory result
The reason for the planned changes is the continuing unsatisfactory result of the printing operation, triggered by the increasing decline in volumes, the still considerable price pressure and the low profit margins in printing. "All efforts and the great efforts of many employees to make the Renens site profitable within Swissprinters are unfortunately having too little effect to be able to present the operating result in a sustainably positive light. We very much regret this," says Alfred Wälti, Managing Director of Swissprinters.
The Swissprinters Group was formed in 2005 from the merger of all the non-newspaper printing operations of Ringier and the NZZ Media Group. In 2006, the western Swiss media group Edipresse joined the group as a shareholder. The Group completed its consolidation to one web offset site in German-speaking Switzerland in mid-2012, closing both its St. Gallen and Zurich operations. Swissprinters prints magazines, catalogs and brochures using the web offset process.
