The Gosport-based educational book printer, which images around 1,500 plates per week for its five colour presses, said that reliability of its pre-press production was a key factor in its decision.

"Another major consideration in making this volume of plates was how to reduce our chemistry usage and the Amigo plate not only meets this requirement, but we find the cleaning of processors is now much easier and quicker," added production director Allan Gray.

Agfa's Amigo is a developer-free plate, which means that the plate is fully imaged by the laser and only then requires a clean-out solution to wash away the unexposed areas.

The company claimed because this process of removing the non-imaged area is physical rather than chemical, it is more stable.

Ashford Colour Press, which has been an Agfa customer for many years, recently completed a £2m investment program including the installation of a KBA Rapida 142 B0 perfecting press, an MBO T1120 perfection buckle-folding machine and a SolPrint MIS.