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Nationwide News Completes Digital Conversion with CtP from Agfa Graphics

Press release from the issuing company

Mortsel, Belgium – 11 January 2007 – Agfa Graphics announced today that Nationwide News (NWN) of News Ltd, the Australian arm of News Corp and Australia's largest newspaper publisher, has completed the conversion of its Chullora print centre to an all-digital prepress and platemaking workflow. Agfa's solutions are being used to produce Australia's highest-selling titles, such as the Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and the Australian. The NWN installation includes four :Polaris platesetters with full :Arkitex production software for use with :N91v violet photopolymer plates. The investment in hardware and software alone is worth 2.9 million AUD (1.75 million euros). This brings the total number of :Polaris and :Arkitex systems in use with News Ltd to eight, with an additional six to be installed in the course of the year. News Ltd uses approx. 900,000 sq.m. of Agfa plates per year and is Agfa Graphics' largest newspaper account in Australia. According to NWN, significant improvements in workflow efficiency, waste management and cost containment have been among the benefits of the conversion. "Because of the volume of work going through our plateroom and the increases we expected, we knew we had to rethink our entire production process," said Jim Nally, general manager of NWN's Chullora print centre. "We are very pleased that NWN selected our products and system solutions for full editorial-to-press integration. NWN's complex production processes have evolved into an advanced, straightforward, and very accurate single-system," said Agfa Graphics' director of newspaper sales, Hans Gerinckx. "There was a learning curve for most of us, but everyone is very comfortable now and we are already seeing the benefits," said Brett Cleary, NWN's CtP maintenance supervisor. "We are producing 440 plates per hour with four plate lines in full production, and that helps us meet our deadlines."

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