Agfa hopes to become a leading player in the print-for-pay market and grow its share of digital proofing.

To date, 90% of Sherpas are used in proofing, said UK product manager Dave Varty. Were positioning ourselves to be dominant in large-format and display printing next year.

It aims to have 50% market share in high-quality media, and claims its market share is already in double figures if CAD-CAM media is excluded.

At the heart of its strategy is a new range of printers, the Grand Sherpas, and new media that can be used on Agfas own machines as well as any other large-format printer regardless of imaging technology or ink type.

There will be three different widths of Grand Sherpa: 50in, 64in and 87in. The first focus when the product is launched at the beginning of 2002 will be the poster market, followed by imposition proofing. Later in the year it will extend to contract proofing, including halftone.

At Print UK the firm will focus on its range of media for the print-for-pay market and on the workflow for proofing.

It will show Open Access and Move and Print, its software packages for integrating into third-party workflows.

Open Access is a 2,750 package for taking pre-screened bitmaps and Move and Print is a 750 application that takes files from systems such as Prinergy, Screen TaigaSpace, Dalim and Barco PackEdge.

At Print 01 the firm is showing the Grand Sherpa and the SherpaMatic, a new machine for automatically creating backed-up imposition proofs.

Story by Barney Cox