The first "Diamond 1000B" press

The Diamond 1000B being produced at Mitsubishi Beiren under licensing from MHI spearheads local manufacture of high-speed, high-quality multicolor sheet-fed presses in China, which has yet to establish its own technologies for high-quality sheet-fed presses. Going forward Mitsubishi Beiren will expand sales of the press leveraging the sales network of Beiren Printing Machinery Holdings. The JV is targeting 300 million yuan (approximately 4 billion yen) in sales and a 25% share of the Chinese market in this size format by 2010.

Mitsubishi Beiren, a printing machinery production and sales JV established in June 2006, is capitalized at 46 million yuan (approximately 600 million yen), with MHI owning a 51% share and Beiren Printing Machinery Holdings retaining the remaining equity. Beiren Printing Machinery Holdings, a company under the aegis of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Industrial Development, is the largest printing machinery manufacturer in China. It employs approximately 3,000 people, and its fiscal 2005 sales totaled 995 million yuan (about 14 billion yen).

While China continues to grow as the "world's factory," at the same time it is rapidly becoming an enormous consumer market. This trend results in a sharply increasing demand for high-quality printing machinery capable of printing product brochures and posters. In response to this development within the Chinese printing machinery, MHI and Beiren Printing Machinery Holdings established the JV.

In China, demand for printing is expected to increase dramatically in the run-up toward the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Mitsubishi Beiren will conduct aggressive marketing activities of the Diamond 1000B to capture this growing market.