Manroland AG manufactures newspaper web offset presses, commercial web offset presses, and sheetfed offset presses for commercial, publications and packaging printing.
The company has production facilities in Offenbach am Main and Augsburg. Manroland Mechatronic Systems in Plauen offers third-party customers the opportunity to expand their production capacity. Together with subsidiary companies, manroland AG employs around 7,000 people worldwide (as at 2010).
History
In 1844, Carl August Reichenbach, nephew of the founder of KBA, Friedrich Koenig, and Carl Buz established the "Reichenbach’sche Maschinenfabrik" (Reichenbach's machine factory) in Augsburg. Six month later the two printing press pioneers supplied their first "Schnellpresse" (automatic cylinder press) to Nikolaus Hartmann's printing plant in Augsburg.
Besides the automatic cylinder press, the 19th century saw another innovation in printing press construction and a newspaper publisher was behind this as well. Around 1850 the question was being asked whether the rotary press principle was suitable for letterpress printing. John Walter III, publisher of "The Times" in London, commissioned the two engineers J.C. MacDonald and John Calverly to develop and build the world's first rotary press for newspaper printing. This became known as the "Walter press". In June 1872, Maschinenfabrik Augsburg sent its development head Gustav Bissinger to England. Fact-finding visits by German engineers to factories and workshops in England, the leading industrial nation of that era, were not uncommon in those days.