The PlateWriter 4200 targets small- and medium-format printers and will be exhibited at Drupa.

Prices for the B2 version are expected to be in the region of 20,000 with the B3 "significantly less".

The product jets a Liquid Dot solution onto an uncoated aluminium printing plate. The imaged plates are then fed through a finishing unit that dries the plate to bond the dots to the plate surface. The unit has a built in gumming station to protect the plates before going to press.

"We have had a lot of interest and is a signal that it will be the new way forward," said G&J iCTP senior product specialist Mark Baker-Homes.

Baker-Homes was previously at Info-Tec, which distributed another iCTP product the JetPlate from US firm Pisces in the UK, which sprayed a "liquid light" onto conventional pre-sensitised plates. He said that the JetPlate had limitations and was "inconsistent".

"But what Pisces did was to pave the way for the industry to see that ink-jet was the best way forward," said Baker-Holmes.