March 17, 2008 - FUJIFILM Corporation has decided to enhance its production capacity for CtP plates, the offset printing plate material for which global demand is rising. The company will invest approximately 15 billion yen (INR 5.9 billion) in its European manufacturing operation, FUJIFILM Manufacturing Europe B.V. (Netherlands), to construct a new CtP plates production line. Construction will begin in October 2008 and operations are planned to begin in January 2010. The European plate manufacturing operation is one of four global bases for the production of offset printing plates.

With the digitization of the printing process, the demand is rising rapidly for CtP systems which allow digital text and image data to be transferred directly to printing plates, eliminating the film processing stage. Recently, demand for CtP  plates has increased further in the emerging countries due to their extraordinary economic growth, and this trend is expected to continue. Meanwhile, due to the heightened environmental awareness in Japan, US and Europe, there is a strong demand for environmentally friendly products such as processless CtP  plates (which generate no waste liquid due to the elimination of the film development process), and chemistry free CtP  plates (that reduce waste liquid due to simplified development processes).

The new production line will feature FUJIFILM’s unique surface treatment technology, called MultiGrain Technology. This enables the stable production of high quality, high definition CtP  plates with excellent durability and consistency. It will also allow FUJIFILM to manufacture processless and chemistry free CtP  plates which require advanced production technology.
 
Looking towards the future, this investment will allow FUJIFILM not only to meet the growing demand for CtP  plates, but will also contribute to reducing environmental impacts by expanding the local production of such environmentally friendly products. Furthermore, FUJIFILM will also expand its supply to the high growth markets in regions such as the Middle East as well as to Europe in order to further increase its market share in the CtP  plates market.