Bernhard Schreier is to leave Heidelberg after being in charge for almost 13 of the sheetfed press maker’s most difficult years, including its exit from the newspaper segment.

The company says he will not be extending his management contract when it expires midyear 2013 and will be leaving the company at the end of 2012.

Replacing him is 56-year-old industry outsider Gerold Linzbach, who joins the company in September for the handover process.

Linzbach, who has a degree in chemistry and a PhD in chemical engineering, worked for a research group and then McKinsey in the 1980s, before joining Hoechst in 1991 in a corporate planning role. During this period, he was part of the team planning the group’s new corporate structure, becoming global chief executive of its Trevira fibre business unit. In 1999, he helped found Aventis.

After leaving Symrise, of which he was chriamn and chief executive “for personal reasons” in 2009, he was appointed chief exective and management board member of D+S Europe and its successor companies in Hamburg.

Schreier is handing over the company's chairmanship after almost 13 years in charge. Over recent months, key steps have been taken to set the company's new strategic course and a start has been made on putting this into practice to return Heidelberg to sustained profitable growth. Success at DRUPA led Heidelberg to its best order quarter for four years. “The Supervisory Board and Schreier himself feel now is the right time to make the change in order to create new impetus at the very top of the company,” says a statement.

Supervisory board chairman Robert Koehler thanks him for his achievements as Heidelberg chief executive. “In a career spanning a total of 37 years, 13 of them as CEO, he has truly made his mark on the company and has succeeded in guiding it through two major global economic crises and structural upheaval in the printing industry. Particularly in very difficult recent times, he has helped transform Heidelberg from a traditional press manufacturer into a solution and service provider in the print media industry," he says.