Talking about Digital Offset Printing Plate (2)

High profit returns

The main reason for the digital printing plate price doubling is that sellers want to make high profits in the process of technology conversion and avoiding the price war waged by Polaroid’s two active managers. Here are a few examples to illustrate this problem.

In the past few years, all plate sellers have begun to provide a complete plate production line using thermal and violet laser plate technology. If a printing company decides to use CTP technology, then at the end of the year when calculating the printing plate usage, the printing plate price will be much lower than the price on the quotation sheet. In terms of the printing plate contract, as a report from the Zarwan Survey Company of Canada shows, the plate making machine has to make greater concessions on the price, and the developing device is usually given as a "free" gift to the customer.

If the technology of a platesetter is advanced enough to make it the only plate of its kind, like Agfa's silver plate, then the seller of the platesetter will have money. Those companies that purchased the violet laser system and the resin version will be slightly better because they can buy products from two or three plate sellers.

The same problem has to be faced in the process of moving to a plate free of processing. The first Presstek company to provide this kind of printing plate is also a typical example. The companies that purchased the Dimension platesetter for the production of the Presstek plates depended entirely on Presstek's pricing and its production capabilities. This is why Heidelberg has shifted its DI printing business to developing printing plates from Japan. This change can make the material cheaper and more important, but at the same time this decision also means that its plate customers are now completely dependent on Heidelberg.

Compared with Bonifatius Druck's situation, you can only applaud Bonifatius management's decision to continue using analog plates.

Reduce competition

When Agfa wanted to acquire Lastra two years ago, many analysts did not know why no competitor raised objections to European corporate joint authorities. This year, Kodak's idea of ​​acquiring Corio has caused great uproar in the United States and Europe because the acquisition plan means that some competitors will once again disappear from the market.

After the drupa 2004 exhibition, Basysprint declared bankruptcy due to the asset crisis and was acquired by the Punch Group in Belgium. The Punch Group is very familiar with the sales business of the platesetter because it acquired Strobbe of Belgium five years ago. In the 1990s, Strobbe developed Polaris, a fast newspaper platemaking machine. Agfa successfully took over its sales business and immediately became a leader in the global newspaper market. (Basysprint's competitive newspaper platesetter uses a traditional plate.)

Strobbe, Saikang and Basysprint formed a new Punch Graphix earlier this year and listed on the London Stock Exchange. In May of this year, Agfa expanded its production contract with Stolibe for Polaris platesetters. Soon after, Basysprint announced to its dealers that it would stop production and sales of newspaper platesetters using economical contact plates.

Plate Making Machine

In the fall of 2004, Esko announced that it would stop production and sales of platesetters for commercial printing, because the platesetter would only be profitable when it was sold in conjunction with the plates. For the same reason, Creo purchased two offset printing production plants in the United States and South Africa and commissioned small distributors to produce plates. For example: Spain's Ipagsa company. Although doing so can help Creo company achieve binding sales of plate makers and plates, it has also caused them to undergo a painful learning phase because of the high requirements for production, delivery and maintenance of thermal plates.

Since Creo was trying hard to change its business model and wanted to trade in the full price of the platesetter through price concessions made on the plates, their decision was not effective. When the three major printing plate dealers sold platesetters and processors at a low price and kept the plate prices high, Creo couldn't drift. In order to sell plate-making machines and developing equipment at a low profit, it is necessary to increase the sales volume while maintaining the high price of printing plates. It is clear that Creo has not yet had the strength to do so.

Why is the price so high?

Perhaps we will hear that digital plates will soon be as cheap as a fairy tale analog plate, but the three major distributors can not face it all.

There are two factors that keep digital printing plate prices high. First, in the past ten years, materials and labor costs have increased a lot, but plate dealers have not been able to add these extra costs to the price of contact plates, so they use the price of digital plates. To make up for these losses. Not only that, Agfa also increased the sales price of analog and digital plates in Europe to cope with the continuous growth of raw materials and transportation costs.

Secondly, all printers using the CTP system have to rely on those dealers to survive at least in recent years, so they are willing to pay extra for printing plates. The cost of printing plates only accounts for 2% of the total cost of printing. And because the price factor will have the same effect on all printers using digital plates (either thermal or UV), the price of plates will not disrupt their competition.

But as we mentioned at the beginning of the article, Bonifatius Druck, using the CTP system does not mean that the printer must increase the cost of the printing plate by a factor of two. As the performance of these platesetters improves, the funds they save each year can help a printer to obtain higher profits in this competitive era.

Author: Liu talk Source: net win