Let me start this Tuesday's article with just a little bit of speculation about what might happen. Most multi-national companies with interests in multiple industries have a consolidated set of accounts reflecting their total business. In July Agfa announced it is speeding up the separation of the individual business divisions of Graphic Systems and Healthcare to become operationally independent by January 1, 2006. By that date the two business groups will each have full control of their income statement and balance sheet. One must ask the question as to why are they doing this. Perhaps Agfa is looking to sell off or have an MBO of one or both of these operations sometime in 2006. I have even heard rumors that discussions are already under way concerning one of the business units. Now I wonder who has enough money left in their war chest to buy Agfa's Graphic Systems business. It makes interesting speculation.

However now to the main subject of today's article, which also may affect how one views Agfa. This once again goes back to one of my favorite topics, CtP, and the thermal versus violet discussion. A few months ago I commented that I felt Fujifilm had taken over the lead in the players in the violet camp. I also commented that their plans to introduce chemistry free violet CtP plates in 2007 would take away one of the main arguments in favor of thermal CtP for the future. Recently Fujifilm have extended their offerings with announcements of the Brillia High Definition range of plates to extend their CtP plate family. These new plates, with high definition emulsion, both for thermal and violet imaging, appear to raise the bar another level and will create the standard that other plate suppliers will strive to achieve.

One of the key factors in the new violet photopolymer plate, the Brillia LP-NV2 is it appears to be as good in terms of specification and functionality as any competitive thermal plate. Before this plate, violet photopolymer plates were acknowledged to be slightly inferior in a few areas to the best thermal plates. This was particularly in terms of resolution where the new plate can support a dot range of 1-99%. Most other violet plates handle a range from 2 or 3 to 97%. The plate is also ideally suited for FM screening with spot sizes of 20 micron. Yes I know that certain thermal plates are capable of handling a 10 micron spot, but to run such a spot size on a plate requires very rigid controls of everything in the press room, and is required for less than 0.5% of printed work. The new plate also has a high sensitivity of between 50 - 100 uJ/cm2 meaning it is suitable for high speed imaging with the violet diodes used in today's platesetters. The plate will handle run lengths up to 200,000 impressions, and can be baked for longer run lengths. A plate however is only as good as the processor and chemistry associated with it. Fujifilm are introducing the new FLP126 processor, which also appears to set a new standard in visible light plate processors. It intelligently identifies the plate size being used and sets replenishment rates automatically to reduce both chemical and wash water usage. This gives very stable processing suitable for FM, hybrid and fine line screening.