Kodak’s SONORA Process Free Plates see 50% rise in volume

Customers report significant economic and sustainability benefits across a variety of applications.

Kodak announced that volume of KODAK SONORA Process Free Plates increased 50 percent in 2015, powered, in part, by sales in all 50 of the United States. Customers across the world have realised the economic and environmental benefits of SONORA Plates, which deliver the print capabilities and productivity of mainstream plates without the processing and chemistry.

Kodak has announced new SONORA Plates suitable for UV printing at drupa 2016. Designed to meet the rigorous demands of UV print applications increasingly used by today’s packaging and commercial printers, the new addition to the SONORA Plate portfolio will enable printers to take advantage of the expanded set of opportunities associated with UV technology, including flexibility and durability, high print quality, and faster drying times.

While process free plates are most closely associated with sheetfed applications, Kodak customers are reporting significant benefits from the use of SONORA Plates in new and innovative ways. These include web fed applications, where SONORA Plates are rated for run lengths of up to 200,000 impressions, along with large format (VLF) applications including posters and printed display board. SONORA Plates are also rated for up to 50,000 impressions for offset packaging applications and up to 10,000 impressions for short-run UV printing. With SONORA Plate production facilities now located in the USA, Europe and China, more than 3,000 customers across the globe benefit from faster supply, support and customer service.

“The continued adoption of SONORA Plates around the world underscores the industry’s demand for more sustainable printing solutions to address new applications and opportunities, all while increasing profitability,” said Brad Kruchten, President of Kodak’s Print Systems Division (PSD).

Gerhard Aichhorn, Owner and Manager, Samson Druck GmbH (Austria), a SONORA XP Plates customer, shares his experience, “By eliminating plate processing machines, we have improved the efficiency of our prepress workflows. Converting to SONORA XP Plates has improved the stability and quality of plate production because fluctuations in chemical processing are now a thing of the past. The change also proves that we mean what we say about green production. The plate making process no longer needs to consume electricity from processing, water, developer, regenerator and gum, and there is no more processor cleaning and chemicals that have to be disposed of.”

“We wanted to further improve our environmental performance by converting from a traditional offset plate with wet chemistry to KODAK SONORA XP Process Free Plates. We opted for the SONORA XP Plate because of the higher coating contrast and the longer storage times following imaging in the CTP system. Since converting to process free plates, we have reduced water consumption by more than 31% simply by optimising water consumption in the plate processing system. The switch to the SONORA XP Plate has been an important step in our process of improvement,” says another customer, Ralf Lokay, Owner, Druckerei Lokay (Germany).