Originally an American newspaper web offset manufacturer founded in 1885 in Chicago by two brothers (who were later joined by their older brother), Goss International today is a global company that is fully owned by the Chinese engineering conglomerate, Shanghai Electric. The company has a long history of leading edge innovation, litigation to defend its patents and has also undergone
several ownership changes. Reorganized and restructured several times over the years, the company set up plants in Europe and Japan and absorbed other allied equipment companies such as Sheridan, Harris, Marinoni, Cottrell et Creusot-Loire and most recently, Heidelberg web systems in 2004.
In 1993, Goss (at the time was known as Rockwell Graphic Systems) entered a joint venture with a company belonging to Shanghai Electric Group’s (SEG) Shanghai Printing and Packaging Machinery(SPPM) that had been building printing presses at the Changfeng Park site since 1939. Not many are aware of the quality and strength of SPPM’s research and
manufacturing capability which includes more than half a dozen wholly and jointly owned companies – one of the largest printing machinery manufacturers in China, if not in the world.
The SPPM companies include Goss International which was fully acquired in June 2010 as well as Shanghai Guanghua Printing Machinery which produces offset multicolour sheetfed presses;
Shanghai Purlux Machinery a producer of folding, collating, binding machines and web fed flexo and stationary presses; Shanghai Yawa, which produces folding carton converting equipment such as autoplaten diecutters and folder gluers; Shanghai Shen Wei Da Machinery, one of five large manufacturers of paper cutting machines in the world; and Akiyama International the Tokyo-based company that was acquired in 2002 and is the manufacturer of the J-Print series of vertical sheetfed perfecters.
SPPM has a state level technical centre with more than 500 employees for the design and development of diversified printing and packaging machinery. In addition, SPPM has
built a world-class R&D centre in Japan which tracks and acquires cutting-edge technologies and industry knowledge to accelerate the speed of technical innovation across the company’s engineering products.
Even though Goss International is now a 100% subsidiary of the SEG corporation, it is still headquartered in Durham, New Hampshire. The company’s website says that it currently maintains four
manufacturing sites – in the United States, France, Netherlands and in China with 2,200 employees. However, we believe that press manufacturing essentially takes place now in the US and in China at the Changfeng Park site in Shanghai with about 500 employees there.
The twenty-first century has not been kind to the major newspaper press manufacturers. Wifag, manroland web systems, Solna and KBA in Europe are all facing a steep fall in demand for high speed (more than 70,000 copies an hour) newspaper presses. Several consolidation attempts have been made and in the case of manroland, the company went into insolvency with the web offset manufacturing
acquired by the German Possehl
Group and the sheet-fed division going to the UK-based Langley group. Even after being acquired by the SEG, parts of Goss such as its company in France have also faced insolvency and subsequent reductions in employment.
The Japanese newspaper press manufacturers – TKS, Seikan and Mitsubishi are also facing the same problem – very limited demand for high speed presses. Of these, Mitsubishi has so far restructured to some extent by merging its sheetfed press operation in a joint venture company with Ryobi while it continues to operate its newspaper and commercial web offset company
in the name of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Printing & Packaging Machinery.
However, amongst the high speed web offset press manufacturers, Goss International seems to be one of the few companies that have found a wealthy industrial parent that is likely to assure its survival and growth. Just as Goss has been designing and showing packaging printing equipment over the past decade, SEG’s SPPM
is a successful innovator and manufacturer of sheetfed presses and autoplaten diecutters.
SEG and SPPM have big plans 1 Ele Da for Goss International. The plant in Changfeng Park (now an extremely valuable locality practically in the heart of Shanghai) will be replaced with a new and modern plant being built in Mihong district. Construction began in January of this year and the new plant is expected be ready in Q1 of 2015 with manufacturing scheduled to shift there by Q2 of 2015.
Goss International’s strategy for this century acknowledges the company’s penchant for innovation and automation. Its leading edge use and approach to computerization, digital controls, electronics and robotics combined with offset domain
knowledge are demonstrated in the Flexible Publishing and Vpak systems.
A clear mission encompasses both the short run and on-demand printing of newspapers and books together with a concerted thrust in board and flexible packaging. The new Goss Compact Magnum 2 x 1 newspaper and book press as well the webfed Goss Vpak offset press for paper and flexible packaging embody the innovative approach to build completely new types of printing equipment in the 21st century that combine the demand for more products with shorter runs with a great deal of integrated automation and digital technologies.
Goss manufactures a very wide range of newspaper, commercial heat set and now web fed offset presses for both board and flexible packaging. With such a range of equipment the company now faces some of the same problems as its customers – how to manufacture more products in shorter runs and increased customization.
Thus its brand new plant in Mihong in Shanghai needs to embody the company’s drive to combine efficiency with environmental care and protection to produce extremely innovative and modern machinery together with the new paradigms of remote diagnostics and service.
Apart from being owned by the SEG Corporation, which according to estimates had a turnover of US$ 12.6 billion in 2013, the company is unique among the seven or eight high speed press manufacturers in being a leading manufacturer of the smaller 2 x 1 presses that are still in demand not only in the emerging economies of
Asia, Africa and Latin America but also in the United States as demonstrated by the first order for the Goss Magnum Compact by a relatively small newspaper group in New York.
For its bigger presses as well as some of its innovative packaging solutions, the company has an edge in the large Chinese and Asian market as well as access to the early adopters in the US and Europe. Moreover, an important ingredient to Goss International’s future success ur seems to lie in its cosmopolitan and diverse collection of senior personnel in Shanghai and around the world.
