Process free plates can help make your print operations more sustainable in addition to boosting your quality, productivity, and efficiencies. Here is how.
In a time of rising costs, squeezed margins, and fast-moving customer demands, printers need to achieve a combination of greater efficiency, productivity, and profitability now more than ever.
But these days, they must make their print process more sustainable, too.
Not only are they obliged to meet more stringent environmental standards, but their customers and end users are demanding that work is produced as sustainably as possible.
Traditional wet processed plate production involves complex chemical processing, accompanied by hazardous waste, emissions, and heavy use of power and water. The good news for printers, though, is that process free plates bring a range of environmental benefits, even as they support improved plate making efficiency and output.
Here are three reasons why going process free can make such a significant difference to your environmental efforts and your business.
Traditional wet processed plate production involves complex chemical processing, accompanied by hazardous waste, emissions, and heavy use of power and water. The good news for printers, though, is that process free plates bring a range of environmental benefits, even as they support improved plate making efficiency and output.
Here are three reasons why going process free can make such a significant difference to your environmental efforts and your business.
1. It eliminates the chemistry needed for traditional plates
When printers use KODAK SONORA Process Free Plates, no plate processor is required. This means that all the chemistry and waste that goes along with traditional plate processing goes away for good. Not only can you reduce the consumption of activator and stabilizer chemistry associated with the traditional method — the developer, replenisher, gumming solution, metals, and clean-out finisher —to zero, but you can also deliver superior print performance.
Another environmental benefit of switching to KODAK SONORA Process Free Plates is that they create a more comfortable workplace for your prepress team. This may be achieved by cutting your employees' exposure to potentially harmful chemicals and reducing health risks. As a result, your decision to switch to process free plates can improve morale and enhance productivity.
2. It means you are disposing of less waste
Since you no longer must deal with any chemistry, and there is no plate processor to clean or maintain. Going process free eliminates the disposal of chemicals, exhausted developers, filters, and wipes into the environment.
By removing the processor, process free plates also eradicate the unappealing and arduous manual task of cleaning the machine. This means there is also no contaminated residual liquids to deal with. Together, this has obvious benefits in terms of reducing pollution of local water systems.
It also adds up to significant cost savings in storage. As many printers know, the storage and subsequent disposal of processing chemistry can be costly. This may be due to local waste regulations changing as environmental studies release new insights, or political agendas shifting. Either way, printers that use traditional wet plates must stay informed and adhere to the latest standards, or risk incurring potentially significant fines.
With process free plates, the risk of penalties is reduced, as is the cost of transportation of chemicals and waste. The aluminium plates themselves can be recycled, which can even mean printers get a portion of their investment in process free plates returned to them as cash back.
3. It cuts your utilities use
Going process free does more than merely make the process cleaner. When you remove the equipment that processes traditional plates, you consume significantly fewer resources than you would with traditional platemaking, too.
Traditional processed plates require extensive use of water. Process free plates do not. KODAK SONORA Process Free Plates can achieve 400,000 impressions on a web press. So, if you currently require a baked plate to reach your required print run you could eliminate the need to process plates and turn off and decommission your energy intensive post-bake ovens. This can significantly reduce the use of air conditioning on premises, further improving energy consumption during prepress operations.
We estimate that by using cost-saving KODAK SONORA Process Free Plates instead of traditional processed plates, the print industry could save 29 million kWh of electricity, and 468 million litres of water, every year.
In 2005, Kodak was first to successfully commercialize a printing plate that needed no processing chemicals. We understood early that, for printers to feel confident about switching to a more efficient and cleaner alternative, continuing to deliver the operational excellence that customers demand was non-negotiable. We ensure that our sustainable plate innovations are engineered to promote quality, productivity, efficiency, and profitability.
Over 6,000 printers currently use our ground-breaking KODAK SONORA Process Free Plates worldwide, making them the best-selling process free plates on the market.
The latest product generation, KODAK SONORA XTRA Process Free Plates, boosts performance and quality, delivering faster imaging speeds, dramatically improved image contrast, and more robust handling. And it removes the potential for processing variability, so printers benefit from more consistent and stable plates that reduce time, waste, and cost in the pressroom, too.
For two decades, Kodak has invested in the continuous improvement of process free technology and can be trusted to stay at the forefront of printers' demand for increased operational efficiency that accompanies the shift from traditional wet plates to process free.
Kodak goes to great lengths to deliver solutions that are not only superior to other alternatives but are also backed by a company-wide commitment to sustainability. This is fast becoming a commercial imperative for printers. Governments, regulators, and brands are becoming more aware of its importance. And more and more printers are now realising it is the right thing to do, too.
Meet FC Group and partners—Kodak and Miraclon at #BOOTH E6
FC Group looks forward to meeting customers and key prospects during this industry exhibition with our Partners: Kodak and Miraclon. Our senior sales team from the UK will be attending the show with our sales and engineering staff based in Kenya. as well as specialist from Kodak and Miraclon.
Please visit us at Booth #E6 to meet and discuss SONORA and other top of the range products and receive expert information on Offset, Flexo and Digital equipment and consumables.
What is more, we will be giving away goodies and gifts so please do pass by, drop your business card, and pick up branded pens, bags etc.
For more information or to let us know you will be visiting Propak East Africa 2024 click here or call us on +254 714 069617, so we know to expect you.
>> Register here to join the exhibition.
Kodak continue to roll out new features, improvements, and new devices building more flexibility and productivity to help improve customer operations. Building more automation into Kodak CTPs, like the KODAK ACHIEVE and TRENDSETTER Platesetters, offers several benefits to printers. It is an extremely competitive environment out there. Printers are looking to invest in technology that will help them expand the range of applications they can offer to their customers.
However, at the same time, they are concerned about keeping their costs down and productivity high. More shops are competing for business that demands shorter run lengths with fast turnaround times, which means to stay profitable, they must aggregate as many short-run jobs as they can and get them through their workflow quickly.
SONORA XTRA The best process free plate just got better. It overcomes the limitations of other process free plates. With all the benefits of process free plate making plus faster imaging speeds, better image contrast, and more robust handling, SONORA XTRA Process Free Plates will revolutionise your print operation.
