AGFA IS CALLING TIME ON DOTRIX, ITS WEBFED high quality inkjet press – just as rival companies are planning announcements and product launches for Drupa.
Development on a new Dotrix machine was well advanced, but is now being frozen, though machines in use at customers will continue to be supported and Agfa will retain the core engineers and designers associated with the Dotrix platform to revive the project should the market be deemed appropriate. Development of UV inkjet inks, which Dotrix used, will continue with applications in wide format inkjet where Agfa has had greater commercial success.
THE ANNOUNCEMENT WAS ONE OF THE KEY COST-CUTTING measures to come with the publication of full year results for 2011. After an increase in revenue to €3.0 billion (€2.9 billion), operating profit fell to €36 million (€234 million). The company says that high raw material price increases and a soft market in the Graphics business contributed to the fall. A restructuring plan was introduced in the final quarter.
The Graphics business showed a marginal sales growth to €1,596 million (€1,565 million) and recorded double digit growth in its industrial inkjet business. Plate sales increased, but the decline in film accelerated, partly owing to price rises, but also to emerging world users skipping a technology generation and going CTP.
BUT IT IS WITH INKJET THAT AGFA IS BASING ITS future. The company says the installed base of Anapurna wide format machines has now exceeded 1,000 units and that sales of M-Press machines and the mid-range Jeti presses are picking up.
However, this success has not been noted by the webfed division, which had originally been part of Barco and remained in Ghent. “The action is part of the restructuring process,” says a spokesman. “The machine that was in development has been suspended and the focus will be on wide format.”
THE DOTRIX FIRST EMERGED AS THE PRINT FACTORY using a page wide array of Xaar heads. At that point is intended for printing on paper as much as for printing on label and flexible packaging materials. In later years the press has been aimed at short run packaging (now predicted to be a fast growing sector) and at high volume labels, but has not been able to achieve breakthrough in a digital labels market dominated by HP Indigo, Xeikon and Efi Jetrion. “We have had a new machine in development, but at the moment we have not reached the expected window of opportunity,” the spokesman adds.
