The plate, which has been undergoing trials at a number of European newspaper printers during the past six months, has a rated run length of 300,000 impressions – double that of Fuji's previous thermal plate.

Sean Lane, technical manager for plates at Fujifilm UK, said: "We had an initial thermal product, LH-NN, for several years, but from a run length point of view and the laser power point of view, it was not everything that we wanted it to be.

"Really the main change from the old product to the new one was an improvement in sensitivity, which enables better productivity from the platesetter, and the run length improvement, which has really been confirmed in the trials that we've been doing."

The Brillia LH-NN2 has been designed specifically for newspaper production with 830nm laser diode-equipped platesetters.

Features of the plate include sensitivity of 70mJ/cm2, wide exposure latitude, long developer life and Fujifilm's patented MultiGrain technology for reduced ink usage and improved water/ink balance.

Despite the improvements made on Fuji's last thermal newspaper plate, the company does not anticipate particularly high demand for the plate in the UK, due to the prevalence of violet technology in the UK newspaper sector.

Lane said: "From a UK perspective I think there're only about four or five newspapers that are using thermal equipment so for that reason it's not going to fly off the shelves.

"However, of course having another supplier in the market is of interest to newspapers and there will be a level of interest but there's not a massive customer base. Thermal technology tends to be a lot more popular in certain European countries than it has ended up being in the UK."