February 23, 2001. Totowa, New Jersey.  Pitman announced today the sale of a second Agfa Polaris 100 platemaking machine to Southwest Offset Printers in Los Angeles with options for a third Polaris and an Agfa Galileo Platesetter.  Southwest Offset Printers will use Agfa N91 CTP plates supplied by Pitman, exclusively in its operations.   Southwest Offset Printers prints four daily publications as well as 28 weekly publications in Los Angeles.  Currently, three of the daily publications are produced using CTP.  With the increase in CTP capacity, Southwest will implement an aggressive plan to convert to 100% CTP as soon as possible.  “The driving force behind our move to CTP was savings in labor, improved quality and concern for the environment.” Said Greg McDonald Owner and CEO of Southwest Offset Printers   In commenting on this sale, Joe Demharter Pitman’s CEO stated “This sale is consistent with our strategic vision of being a major player in newspaper CTP, and Pitman has established the work-flow, CTP and pressroom integration to make our customers successful”.   The first publication to be produced with Polaris was The Financial Times, headquartered in the United Kingdom.  Ed Tervol, Vice President of Manufacturing said, “we chose Pitman because we needed a partner with the capacity to handle a printer of our size.  We cannot afford to run out of anything, what with our numerous publications and tight deadlines We chose Agfa because of their International stature and they had been working with the Financial Times.