Yesterday’s article, Follow the Plates Part 1 by Steve Aranoff & Robert FitzPatrick of The EAGLE,showed a fascinating change in the market. I look forward to reading Part 2 on Wednesday. The article showed how the three major players in printing plates, Agfa, Fuji and Kodak, were all building future businesses utilizing the income derived from plates. This is certainly something I have been seeing for some time, and have commented on it in a number of articles I have written. Agfa is building up to be a major player in the ink jet printing market, emphasizing the industrial rather than the offset replacement, office and consumer printing markets. I believe that this may change and I would not be surprised in the next year if Agfa announce an ink jet digital press to compete with existing Xerox and equivalent products. Kodak has invested heavily in building a major presence in the digital printing market, with both xerographic and ink jet technologies. Fuji has been far less obvious in its future plans, but the recent acquisition of ink supplier Sericol gives certain clues. The 75% ownership of Fuji Xerox also shows where it sees future markets.

The EAGLE article also comments on the situation where it appears that Agfa, Fuji, and Kodak are arguably now more significant to the future of printing than Heidelberg or any other single supplier. This is because Heidelberg has withdrawn from its role of pushing aggressively into new markets to consolidate its core business. In a time of reducing press demand, Heidelberg could not afford to fund the high cost of development into these new markets, where there were already larger and richer established suppliers.

I don’t however believe that Heidelberg will stay out of the future markets and just stay in its core business area of sheet fed offset and associated pre and post press solutions. Heidelberg still has a minority shareholding in Spectra, one of the key ink jet print head companies. They are still working internally with this technology, and I would not be at all surprised to see some ink jet products appearing in the future. I also would not be surprised if Heidelberg were to reach a marketing and distribution agreement with another major supplier to handle digital presses, once their non-compete agreement with Kodak has expired.