Overseas plates, both conventional and CTP, promise a lower price per square metre. However, I’m not convinced that his hypothesis stands up and despite the attractiveness of a bargain in these credit-crunched times, any saving may be a false economy.
According to Mittelhaus, the current pricing in Europe of conventional plates is around €5-€6/m2, digital plates are €8-€10/m2 and chemistry free plates cost €9-€12/m2. A large part of his argument hinges on firms switching from thermal or visible-light CTP to computer to conventional plate (CTCP) technology. But even at the dawn of CTP, when it was much more expensive than conventional systems, CTCP failed to set the world on fire.
The plates may be cheaper, but the platesetters are more expensive. Plus, with only two vendors – Punch Graphix division Basysprint and Swiss firm Lüscher with its Xpose! – there isn’t a great deal of choice. Granted, both have had some success in niche areas. (Lüscher notably in high-volume environments where the volume of plates makes the price difference between conventional and CTP plates add up to a tidy sum that far exceeds the increased upfront hardware costs.)
Central technology
The reality for most companies is that plates are not just a commodity that carry the image to print from, but are central to how they finance their pre-media technology, covering the platesetter and the important workflow that drives it. Don’t forget that workflow is increasingly going to be driving digital print output. Well, the short-run static content at least.
While Mittelhaus predicts the big three losing dominance in plates, anecdotally they report more firms are turning to them and signing plate deals that enable them to refresh their pre-media departments, and workflow in particular, in a way that doesn’t rely on them going cap in hand to the bank manager to fund capital expenditure.
I can understand the move: if I was looking to improve my operations, I’d consider that workflow software that streamlined my operations would deliver a far better return on investment than penny-pinching on the price of pre-sensitised plates.
In fact, as finance becomes tighter, it appears more companies are taking this approach. For a long time, printers professed to hate the click-charge model of paying for a digital press, but what, apart from semantics, is the difference between paying a premium per plate to get the necessary workflow to output them and paying pennies per page for the privilege of printing?
With no sign of the Chinese plate vendors or CTCP suppliers being able to provide the increasingly important workflow tools or the finance facilities to help printers procure them, I can’t see any immediate threat to the big three’s dominance.
Two-minute takeaway on the prospects for cheap Chinese plates
- German pre-press consultant Michael Mittelhaus has claimed that it is possible to save in the region of €4/m2 in plate costs if Chinese plates are suitable for your business
- Mittelhaus argues that these lower prices could pose a long-term challenge to the big three plate vendors – Agfa, Kodak and Fuji – and cause printers to re-evaluate computer to conventional plate (CTCP) technology
- Mittelhaus estimates that there are at least 15 Chinese firms targeting developed Western markets with their products, which are primarily conventional UV-sensitive analogue plates with some thermal CTP plates
- Despite the attraction of low-price plates, even independent dealers that stand to gain from Chinese products question whether the current logistics infrastructure and product quality is good enough to support the demands of European printers
- The full 54pp report is available from Michael Mittelhaus at www.mittelhaus.com or mittelhaus@t-online.de for €295
