There are so many glamorous and eye-catching items of printing technology to get over-excited about these days that the poor printing plate tends to get overlooked. As one plate specialist mournfully puts it, "we’re usually tucked away at the back of the stand at Ipex or Drupa, rather than being at the front."

When you consider the central role plates play at printers of all shapes and sizes up and down the country, this seems an odd state of affairs. Malfunctioning, unreliable or unsuitable plates can have enormous knock-on consequences in terms of lost production hours and job remakes and so picking the right product is essential.

The trouble is, in the past printers wrongly seemed to think plates were much of a muchness – the reality is very different. Choosing the right plate for particular types of work is an important task for business owners and managers, and also one that should be regularly reviewed.

Encouragingly, it seems that a growing number of printing companies are taking a more holistic view when it comes to making decisions about their key consumables, as Fujifilm’s product manager for offset solutions Sean Lane reports: "Businesses that are better run are looking at everything involved," he says. "People are becoming wiser and not just looking at the price per square metre. They are now looking at the total package including the chemical costs , the running costs, and the environmental costs. They want to know the total cost of ownership, which is a good thing. The more prevalent trend is not just about ‘what’s your plate price’."

And it seems plate manufacturers have spotted this change and are catering for it. Kodak even went ‘on tour’ around Europe with its latest Trillian SP thermal plate last year, to stress the benefits of a product that’s not the cheapest option available.

"It’s a different value proposition because it’s so much more efficient, and there are savings in energy, water and waste. Yes, it’s a higher-priced product, but customers appreciate the benefits," says Kodak global plates portfolio director Kevin Cazabon.

Savvy operators
In fact the increasingly sophisticated and savvy nature of plate purchasers in western European markets such as the UK is cited as one of the reasons why imports of Chinese-made plates have not grown to the sort of levels that were predicted after the last Drupa in 2008. The expansion plans of the swathe of Asian suppliers that were present at the show have been stymied by a variety of factors: Cazabon says the pricing environment overall has become ‘a lot more competitive’ in the past couple of years. And Agfa has notably defended its patents through the courts by targeting the European distributors of Chinese-made products where it believes its technology is being infringed.

Last but certainly not least, few Chinese manufacturers have been able to meet the quality, consistency and reliability of supply and support requirements of western European customers. Batch-to-batch consistency is frequently highlighted as an issue for customers.

Agfa Graphics head of product marketing Ralph Hilsdon says the Chinese have some catching up to do: "In analogue plates we see quite a lot of activity from the Chinese, but there is less activity in digital [CTP] plates. There are a few exceptions, but in the main the Chinese products are the equivalent technology of our first generation digital plates.

"Plates are a relatively small cost in the scheme of a total job, but if plates fail or start giving problems on-press, then you really begin to add up what that costs. A saving of €0.50 per square metre can easily be wiped out," he adds.

The cost of the plates is not to be overlooked, though, and for most commercial printing plates the price is inextricably linked to the price of aluminium, a worldwide commodity. For this reason it’s increasingly the case that long-term plate supply contracts have raw material clauses written into them.

Kodak, for example, recently announced price increases for its conventional and digital plates due to "sustained, universal rise in costs for key raw materials and utilities used in the production of offset plates".

"The aluminium cost is key and it’s a major issue in our industry. Raw material costs are something we have to deal with, but printers need to make sure they focus on getting a fair scrap value too, as it can neutralise the price increase in many cases," says Cazabon.

The bigger picture
Agfa’s Hilsdon also highlights what he describes as "probably the big forgotten part of the plate story", that being the availability of expert technical support. "We employ specialist application experts who know how presses work and how all the chemicals interact," he states. "We sometimes hear of very low prices being offered, but when you look at adding things like support, and local stockholding, then the gap is very much smaller than the headline figure."

Fujifilm’s Lane concurs. "It’s not just the plate, it’s the supplier, the backup and the support structure. We have had a couple of smaller customers who have seen the opportunity of a lower plate price, but after a couple of months of issues and lack of back-up and support, they’ve said ‘we can’t carry on like this’."

All of this makes it no surprise to hear Hilsdon report no real evidence that the big three have lost any appreciable market share to Chinese competitors.

Pre-media consultant Michael Mittelhaus is producing an updated report on the progress of Chinese plate exporters that will be published this summer. He remains convinced that the market dynamics will change: "It is not easy for these [Chinese] companies to get into foreign markets and the actual export figures from plates from China are below 20% of worldwide plate production," he says. "This will definitely change in the near future, as more and more European dealers adopt these products. Also plates from other Asian countries are developing, including Korea, Vietnam, and India."

Perhaps the one Chinese manufacturer that is currently the exception to this relative lack of Asian penetration in Europe is Xingraphics, which actually won a long-running patent battle with Agfa this time last year. The firm’s European technical product manager Paul Rudman acknowledges that batch-to-batch consistency has been an issue for some Chinese plate makers, although understandably he would not put Xingraphics in this bracket, and describes the firm as "the only one [of the Chinese manufacturers] that’s patent-free and free to trade".

"It’s going really well for us in the markets we are active in across Europe. We are at least number four, if not higher, in those markets," says Rudman, although the company is still searching for a distribution partner for the UK and Ireland. "We expect to get more active in the UK later this year," he adds.

Xingraphics has an innovative phase-change plate technology in the pipeline (a technology first explored by Creo in the 1990s), and expects it to be commercially available by Drupa 2012, and possibly a little earlier than that.

It’s not just Chinese-made plates that are resulting in court action. Last November chemistry-free plate pioneer Presstek won a case against Israeli-manufacturer VIM Technologies in Germany, banning the sale of its plates in that country.   

Advances
Ongoing advances in plate technology from the established suppliers can best be described as ‘evolution not revolution’. Furthering the capabilities of processless and low-chemistry plates to make them suitable for a wider range of potential users is a common theme, along with continuing efforts to reduce the environmental impact of printing plates wherever possible.

"Processless is not suitable for all applications at the moment, but we still continue to develop it and believe that eradicating chemistry is the way to go," says Fujifilm’s Lane, who cites the firm’s recent development of a processor with reduced chemistry usage and extended bath life as the sort of notionally small advance that makes a substantial difference for users. "If we can increase the bath life by three or four times, people are interested. It’s very beneficial in terms of cost and time savings," he says.

Another area of improvement is extended plate life. "If  you can increase the run length of plates, you can reduce the need for baking, with is good for the environment," says Hilsdon, who views the market for plates as being essentially split into two parts: the ‘less demanding’ sheetfed environment where printers are typically using conventional inks and coated paper; and the more complex environment encompassing heatset web, packaging and other applications using UV inks, and coldset printing onto the sort of rough paper that wears out printing plates. Book printing can potentially fall into both camps.

Hilsdon believes that the ‘less demanding’ half has the potential to go chemistry-free, an market where Agfa has enjoyed considerable success with the Azura and Amigo plates using its Thermofuse technology. "As chemistry-free plate run lengths increase, and they become more sensitive, you increase the markets those plates suit – roughly 50% of the market could use that sort of plate now. Most customers want to go chemistry-free if they can – it takes out so many variables and life gets easier."

Kodak’s Cazabon also reports that Kodak is selling "as much Thermal Direct as we can make", and the firm’s Leeds-based plate facility is now the major worldwide supply hub for the plate after taking over manufacturing of the range at the end of last year. Further evidence of a recovery in the market for plates comes from Fujifilm, which has revived its plans – mothballed during the global financial crisis – to build an additional offset plate line at its Tilburg site in the Netherlands, a €100m (£90m) investment that will make the plant Fujifilm’s largest facility of this type in the world.
Printing plates: ubiquitous yet surprisingly sophisticated, and worth a more detailed look.

TOP TIPS
• Keep up to date with the latest developments to ensure you’re using the optimal plate for your business needs
• Don’t dismiss processless and low-chemistry plates as being unsuitable, they can be a good choice for a wide variety of commercial printing applications
• Bulk packaging options aren’t just for power users consuming thousands of plates per month, this method of delivery can also work for quantities as low as 200-300 plates
• Beware scrimping on cheap and unreliable plates that can cause costly production problems on press
• Make sure you’re getting the best price for scrap plates
• Consider the total package of benefits on offer from your plate supplier, along with the potential ramifications to your business if you are thinking about changing suppliers