Agfa Renews Technology License Agreement with TechNova

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At IPEX, there was plenty of news from litho plate manufacturers that affects India. Kodak Polychrome Graphics (KPG) announced the set-up of a new plate manufacturing line in China. Jeff Jacobson said that the 3 million square metre line will also manufacture plates suitable for computer to plate devices and KPG is of course a leader in thermal plates and actively promoting thermal CtP in India most notably with Creo but with other manufacturers as well. KPG worldwide has been on an acquisition spree and it wouldn't surprise us if KPG acquired or built a plate line in India. The new line in China may take time to get up and running, but Chinese manufactured plates in a scenario where the WTO will compel the reduction of import taxes, should be a wake up call to the three major manufacturers in India. These include TechNova, ATE-Stovec and Lastra Niraj. Lastra made news at IPEX with the announcement of its acquisition of Western Lithotech a dominant litho plate supplier to the United States market and a company that also sells a high- speed CtP device. Lastra, now the fourth largest plate manufacturer worldwide, has been speaking of building a new plant in India for some time, but we still have no concrete information about these plans. Informal estimates of Indian plate consumption are in the range of 8 million square metres. If correct, this would imply a 50 per cent increase in consumption in the last three years. ...cont´d

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