The Smithers Pira white paper looked at used sheetfed presses from five manufacturers and found that Heidelberg presses produced higher volumes of print annually than competitor machines on average. It stated that "the profit opportunity for Heidelberg machines is significantly higher than for competitive models."

However, Klaus Schmidt, Koenig & Bauer director of marketing and corporate communications, denounced the findings. He told PrintWeek: “It seems that the Smithers Pira study has been ordered as a white paper with the target to reach the published result. The number of prints per year is no clear indicator for the productivity of a press. It depends on the press configuration (number of colours, inline finishing equipment, straight or perfecting), structure of the print jobs produced (long or short runs, standard or sensitive substrates, good enough or high-end quality), the qualification and motivation of the press crew and the business model of the print shop (one, two or three shifts).”

Vimal Surana of Indo Polygraph agrees with Klaus Schmidt's comments.

So, why are KBA second-hand offset presses so popular in India? Instead of posing this question to Schmidt, we asked Vimal Surana of Indo Polygraph which has been handling the KBA roster in India.