Independent contract printer Mortons of Horncastle installed the Luxel VX 9600 in January at its Newark-on-Trent print site.

Mortons production director Jim Lee said that the machine currently produced around 60 plates per hour, but that the aim was to improve that speed to around 100pph.

Mortons' Newark site is its second and was acquired from local publisher the Newark Advertiser Company in July 2002.

The plant runs an ageing Harris 845 press, with three horizontal units, which produces 48pp full-colour in collect mode. The units have different plate lock-ups and bend profiles because two are US-built, while one is French-built.

Lee said: "The Fuji machine handles different sizes of plates. Without that, we'd need two dedicated platesetters."

Fuji is organising visits with customers to the Nottinghamshire site, which it hopes will be a showroom for its violet newspaper credentials.

Although this is its first violet installation in a newspaper printer, Fujifilm has plenty of experience in violet CTP the firm recently installed its 1,000th violet CTP platesetter at Suffolk firm Kingfisher.

Fuji's project follows KPG's worldwide launch of its own violet platesetter, the Newsetter V120, at Newstec. KPG has also weighed into the violet plate market with the VioletNews, which is currently used at the County Down Spectator in Bangor, Northern Ireland.

Agfa currently rules violet CTP in the newspaper arena, especially following a massive order from Docklands newspaper giant West Ferry for nine Polaris XCV-S violet platesetters.

Story by Josh Brooks