The firm revealed its Ipex plans for ink-jet print alongside new workflow, platesetters and plates click here for separate story.
It estimates that the industrial ink-jet market will be worth 6.8bn (10bn) by 2010 and has set its sites on cornering 20% of it.
"Make no mistake, Agfa is going to take a serious chunk of that market," said Agfa Graphics UK director Laurence Roberts.
A UK customer is currently installing four of the duplex configuration machines capable of printing 500 A4 pages per minute to produce transactional and direct mail print. The site will be producing 1m pages per day, which will run round the clock 365 days per year, with each machine guzzling 40,000 litres of ink per year.
Following from the launch at last year's Fespa of its M-Press (pictured) and Anapurna UV-cured grand-format machines, it will extend the Anapurna range with two new machines and provide an update on the first M-Press installation.
SMP Woolwich, the world's first user of the M-Press, will install its machine in the second week of March and be up and running by Ipex. Agfa will be taking prospects to see the machine in action after Ipex. Commercial installations of the hybrid screen and digital press, developed in conjunction with screen press manufacturer Thieme, are tipped to begin before the end of the year. Six of the 17 machines on order are destined for UK firms.
Development of the Anapurna has been slightly delayed, but Agfa insisted that "strategic development was on track", and the first machines would be installed in the UK in May. At Ipex, the top of the range Anapurna 64 and 100 will be joined by two new machines, the L and XL, 1.6m- and 2.5m-wide respectively. The UV-cured machines offer 363x725dpi resolution, flat sheet and roll-to-roll printing and white ink. They will be available immediately. Pricing is set at 99,000 for the L and 124,000 for the XL.
In addition to the duplex version, the Dotrix will be shown as a hybrid digital and flexo label production line incorporating flexo white prior to four-colour digital, flexo varnish afterwards and die-cutting, slitting and rewinding. Agfa will sell complete lines using a press platform made by a British manufacturer for it.
Roberts said: "With narrow web we feel it will all be digital at some time in the future."
The firm added that it had a "very competitive model [to HP Indigo], when you consider total cost of ownership" in the digital narrow web market.
How the market reacts to the Dotrix platform may lead to the firm producing narrower and slower versions of the 63cm-wide roll fed machine, which produces 900sqm per hour.
It is also working on newspaper printing using UV-cured ink-jet based on its experience with the transactional market, and expects to be able to bring a product to the market within three years.
