Kodak's proposed acquisition of Creo is currently facing regulatory scrutiny in the United States.  The companies must now comply with a “2nd request” by antitrust regulators by providing additional information on competition in overlapping markets. In Canada, the potential acquisition has passed all governmental approvals and almost 100% of shareholders have agreed to the acquisition.

What then is the situation in the USA and what could this mean to the smooth progression of the acquisition? It appears that there is likely to be a problem, and this is in the area of newspaper CtP and plates for this market. In the USA the newspaper CtP market was far later in starting than the market in Europe. The European market is predominantly a visible light CtP market, whereas in North America thermal CtP has the largest market share. The reasons for this are numerous but this is the situation. The problem is that there are only two suppliers of thermal newspaper CtP units that are acceptable to newspaper publishers. These are the Creo with the Trendsetter News range which Creo claims has some 30% of the North American market with around 160 units installed, and KPG with the Newsetter range which is claimed to have around 10% of the market with around 50 units installed. The largest visible light systems supplier is Agfa with around 110 units installed. The total North American market is around 560 units at this time.

It appears that many of the Creo units use plates from Southern Litho and Anocoil. The problem that is probably being foreseen in the regulatory scrutiny is Kodak will almost certainly be pushing its Thermal News newspaper plate, as it does with the KPG Newsetter installations. This will most likely lock out Southern Litho and Anocoil, as well as Agfa and Fujifilm in sales situations. With many newspapers preference for thermal technology this would probably be seen as a breach of the competition regulations in the USA hurting other plate suppliers’ businesses. The only possible alternative CtP device is the Screen PlateRite News which has been launched in the USA. This however is not competitive at this time, and unlikely to be attractive to most newspapers. In the visible light newspaper CtP market there are a number of suppliers, and currently at least three suppliers of plates.