Ferrostaal Equipment Solutions South Africa, in conjunction with Fujifilm, has secured the rights to distribute and service Fujifilm-branded thermal computer to plate equipment, under an OEM arrangement. Ferrostaal Equipment Solutions South Africa is the distributer for Fujifilm’s advanced printing plate technology.
Eric Duggan, Managing Director for Ferrostaal Equipment Solutions, said, We have been successful in launching Fujifilm’s advanced violet printing plate technology with our Fujifilm Luxel Violet range of computer to plate equipment. We have, however, had limited success with Fujifilm’s advanced thermal printing plate technology. This is largely due to not being able to supply the market with an acceptable thermal computer to plate engine. We went to drupa with the aim of securing a distributorship for a thermal computer to plate engine.
Fujifilm’s advanced Thermal Technology
The Fujifilm Brillia HD PRO-T3 thermal plate is a process-less plate that does not require any form of prepress processor or finishing unit or any associated chemicals, chemical waste or energy usage. Its main selling point is the massive gain you get from removing the processor from the pre-press operation, which saves time and money and reduces the environmental impact. By eliminating any form of pre-press development along with the associated chemicals and waste products, Fujifilm claims that the plate is ecologically efficient and can help printers to improve their environmental performance. Ferrostaal says its target market for PRO T3 is smaller printers that can benefit from eliminating the costs of running a plate processor or finishing unit.
Larger printers will be able to cut costs by reducing the chemical use and cleaning patterns associated with producing larger volumes of plates by implementing Fujifilm’s award-winning series of intelligent ‘ZAC’ processors. These processors incorporate unique Fujifilm developed software to intelligently control the amount of replenisher used in the plate development process. These improvements mean that a full bath of replenisher will now develop around 15000sqm of plates, as opposed to the previous specification of 2000sqm, bringing major benefits to users of this system. ZAC systems achieve substantial savings in developer consumption and cleaning down time over a typical year’s platemaking. It is not uncommon to save over 200 hours of cleaning time and over 3500L of developer for a large 50000sqm consumer of plates over a year’s plate production.
