Plate sales soar as offset bounces back

Offset print plate volumes at both Kodak and Fujifilm are soaring, as the global print industry bounces back from the Covid downturn, with printers firing up their presses and ordering new ones.

Sales of the Kodak Sonora plate almost doubled in the second quarter to June, up by 84 per cent. Fujifilm doesn’t give such a detailed breakdown, but says offset plate sales have surged, thanks to its new Superia ZX plate.

Kodak and Fujifilm are two of the big three offset plate manufacturers, with Agfa the third of the trio. 

The soaring plate volumes chime with the surge in offset press sales that is currently underway, with the big three German press manufacturers – Heidelberg, Koenig & Bauer, and manroland – all reporting strong sales. manroland in fact has just hit a decade high.

Although hard to comprehend in the local market, which is now facing its worst Covid crisis since the outbreak 18 months ago, much of the rest of the world is now back to operating almost normally, with the UK, Europe, the US and China now largely free of the shackles of Covid.

Even here though, offset press sales are happening. Heidelberg for instance has sold 11 multi-unit offset presses in the past year, mostly B1 press, including the XL106 and two of the newly launched CX104 models, and also some B2 XL75s.

The surge in Kodak Sonora plate sales helped the company increase sales by US$78m in the three months to 30 June, to US$291m.

Traditional printing sales at Kodak in the second quarter rose 42 per cent, to US$169m, with EBITDA of US$6m compared to just US$1m in 2020. Digital printing revenues were also up by 19 per cent at US$62m, and the unit broke even, improving on the prior year’s US$3m loss.