ROCHESTER, N.Y. - Since the announcement of its 1,000^th SONORA Process Free Plate customer in July 2014, Kodak’s SONORA Plate customer base has grown dramatically. There are now more than 1,800 customers using SONORA Plates and strong global growth is projected to continue.

The enthusiastic adoption of Kodak’s process-free plates stems from both their economic and environmental benefits. SONORA Process Free Plates eliminate the processing step required by traditional thermal plates and provide significant energy, water, and waste reductions without requiring printers to make sacrifices on productivity or print capabilities.

With continued pipeline growth, significant manufacturing investments, and more customers available to share their experience with SONORA Plates, Kodak expects 2015 to be another year of continued success. Numerous initiatives to stimulate SONORA Plates growth directly led to impressive results across all regions.

United States & Canada              

• SONORA Plate customers grew at a 400 percent rate in 2014
• Kodak is both adding new customers and proactively converting customers from KODAK THERMAL DIRECT Non Process Plates to SONORA Plates in anticipation of new plate manufacturing capacity in Columbus, Georgia. 

Asia

• Kodak recently upgraded its Xiamen, China plate plant to manufacture SONORA Plates, contributing to tremendous growth in plate shipments in the region.
• Kodak shipped SONORA Plates to more than 200 customers in Asia in 2014, with that number expected to increase in 2015.

Europe

• Year-over-year SONORA Plate growth in Europe was more than 200 percent in 2014.
• At WAN-IFRA World Publishing Expo 2014, Kodak gave live demonstrations of KODAK SONORA NEWS Process Free Plates as they become available for European newspaper publishing.

Latin America

• Several large flagship newspapers converted to SONORA NEWS Plates.
• KODAK SONORA XP Process Free Plate and SONORA NEWS Plate sales account for about 35 percent of all Kodak plate sales in the region.

ExecutiveQuote

• “Our commitment to providing regionally manufactured SONORA Plates to our customers has been a critical component of our customer service program, and we look forward to further developing these relationships to promote sustainable and efficient printing worldwide,” said Brad Kruchten,President of Kodak’s Print Systems Division (PSD).