The new business unit will be headed by Malcolm Pendlebury, former director of service and more recently Managing Director of MAN Roland GB.

Chris Marks, Chairman of the Executive Board of MAN Roland Western Europe, will take over the day-to-day running of MAN Roland GB as Chairman and Managing Director, with assistance from senior sales directors Gary Doman and Norman Revill.

Commenting on the changes, Chris Marks said: "During his press conference speech at IPEX, our CEO Gerd Finkbeiner highlighted the need to work closer with major customers in order to provide a more comprehensive life-cycle management programme - building a more complete relationship with our users with, for example, long-term maintenance agreements. This is the first stage of that development for MAN Roland.

"The new business unit will focus on stronger relationships and on integrating more of our products and services into customers' print related activities. Malcolm Pendlebury is the ideal individual to pursue these goals, as he has both a strong service background, and has operated at a senior level within the company."

One of the key aims of the new business unit will be to meet the increasing post-installation demands of the ever growing web press customer base - especially evident in the UK newspaper market.

The above changes are effective from April 24th 2006.