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THE MARKET FOR newspaper presses may be returning, but one thing that hasn't changed since Nexpo 93 was this spring's rumor of the impending sale of part or all of Rockwell Graphic Systems.
In this DRUPA year, however, the rumor mill worked both sides of the Atlantic, with similar for-sale reports filtering back from the gigantic graphic arts equipment show in Germany.
A Rockwell Graphic Systems spokesman said the printing equipment manufacturer is not for sale, in whole or in part. He added that he was unaware of any interest in selling the business.
The annual "Who's-buying-Atex?" game ended late in 1992 when Kodak sold its subsidiary, which was resold earlier this year to a foreign systems vendor. Since then, the buzz switched from the big-name, one-time market leader in publishing systems to the big-name, market leader in newspaper printing equipment.
Assuming the last big U.S. press maker was to be sold, likely suitors in this case also would be foreign companies, the biggest competitors being German and Japanese.
While Graphic Systems' printing equipment constitutes a small part of Rockwell International's business compared with the corporation's other segments, it is a part of the company that never depended on military or other government contracts. And in the face of federal budget cutting, Rockwell's reliance on those contracts has diminished.
Rockwell now derives almost two-thirds of its revenues from commercial and international sales. Graphic Systems...