The Hartz mountains straddle what used to be the border dividing the two Germanies. The area is now designated a national park with outdoor activities to the fore. People come to ski in the winter, hike and trail ride in the summer. It is what in the UK would be called an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
And in the middle of all this is Kodak’s largest printing plate factory at Osterode. It has been here since 1984 on a site chosen for its space, transport links and access to soft water which is highly suitable for producing aluminium printing plates. In those days this was Polychrome part of the DIC group, becoming Kodak Polychrome Graphics in 1998, later Kodak, as DIC focused on inks and Kodak acquired Polychrome’s plate production interests.
Today Kodak has three plate production sites, in Germany, the US and Japan, making it the only company to have production within the three major markets for print. Fujifilm has recently consolidated plate production in Japan and China; Eco3 retains plate production in Europe as well as China. “In the US our competitors have exited,” says Denisse Goldbarg, Kodak’s chief marketing officer and head of Eamear sales. “We are the only remaining manufacturer and it will be the same in Europe we believe. We will continue to manufacture and be present in Europe. And although there are costs associated with that, it’s a strategic initiative. We want to be the local manufacturer in markets that we operate in.”
There are challenges from this decision: production costs may be higher, there are drops in print volumes to consider, the universal shortage of skilled labour and supply chain disruption. These are countered by the lower costs of transportation, and thus reduced carbon footprint, promotion of renewable energy and greater control to deliver consistent quality.
“We will win in terms of quality and sustainability,” says Goldbarg. That is provided there is a level playing field. Kodak has been taking action against plates being imported from China and Japan into the US arguing that these suppliers had received unfair support from their governments. Kodak won and a 38.5% tariff is being applied to imports of these plates, somewhat higher it seems than Kodak was expecting. There are two further cases underway, including one alleging dumping, ie selling plates at less than the cost of the raw materials.
“We are not just protecting the plate business,” says Goldbarg. “We are protecting local print production. We have seen how this sort of activity unwinds in other industries, pharmaceuticals for instance, how that destroys local manufacture and jobs.”
Those jobs are moved to Asia until production follows and once local production ends because it cannot compete, prices may rise sharply. Standards on the other hand may fall.
Goldbarg continues: “Regional production is better for print, better for the economy and better for business. Our production conforms to the very strict standards in Germany to push down CO2 emissions and to protect against supply chain disruptions from long supply chains.”
The energy used in Osterode for example is increasingly from certified renewable sources as this becomes feasible. It does not have on site renewables, the payback for a PV set up on the roof of the factory is simply too long and makes no sense.The plant though holds ISO 15001, the energy management standard which calls for continuous improvement in energy used per square metre.
Plates remain big business for Kodak even if in the long term it believes that inkjet must prevail. In the meantime its Sonora plate has become the most successful process-free plate available. Kodak has 20 years’ experience in developing process free plates claiming to have the first on the market. That first plate was Thermal Direct, using a process on press approach that has not changed since. It was not a success, being too soft and too restrictive in its application. It was for committed printers only. With Sonora, especially the current Xtra versions, this is no longer the case. Sonora is as robust and universal as any presensitised plate. The approach has not changed: the laser in the platesetter creates the image which is harder than the coating around it. This is then removed and is carried away as the press is inked up on the first few sheets through the press. When set up correctly, the sheet is clean after half a dozen rotations and the coating does not find its way into the fount solution.
Developments over the years have focused on improving the robustness of the plate, now no different from a conventionally process plate, the resistance of the image to fading and the contrast of the image on the plate to make it easier to check and read. Development work continues to ensure current and future generations of Sonora are the only plate that all or any printer needs.
“More and more companies are coming to understand the benefits of process-free plates. There are additional costs associated with buying the plates, but there are tremendous savings everywhere else,” Goldbarg says. This covers lack of processing chemistry to be bought, stored and disposed of, greater consistency of image thanks to elimination of the inconsistencies that can creep in with processing and the savings from not having to purchase, drive and clean a processor. On press the plate is clean, hence makeready is shorter and more predictable with less paper waste resulting in savings.
Nevertheless not all printers are convinced and Kodak continues to produce millions of square metres of Trillian, Electra XD and other plates, both at Osterode and its other sites. There are three lines at Osterode and currently two can produce the Sonora plates. The variety of plates and sizes that can be produced generates some mind boggling statistics. First there is a choice of gauge. Then there is the format, from a 287x575mm newspaper plate to a 1,250×2,900mm plate for a 96pp heatset web press. Then there are the products themselves and different ways of packing these to suit platesetters and differing levels of automation. It amounts to more than 4,000 different combinations.
Not all can be tested on site. Some can. There are three offset presses as part of the R&D set up. There is R&D at the other plants, Columbus, Georgia, where there are two plate lines and Japan where Kodak has a single line. The main work is done in Germany by a cross discipline team. Any new plate also undergoes extensive testing in the field, first with a handful of customers and then with far more to understand performance on as a wide a range of presses and conditions as possible. That complete, Kodak is confident that a plate is ready for market.
The R&D teams are constantly monitoring and tweaking settings on the lines to deliver improvements. A mix of skills is desirable from engineering to chemistry.
Oliver Blum for example joined Kodak with a PhD in chemistry 27 years ago. His colleague Michael Flugel also trained as a chemist, but moved across to the technical applications group for plates. Both are needed. Blum says: “It’s not that easy to make a litho plate.” Making one that improves on the performance of its predecessor is a harder step again. Flugel’s aim is to ensure that the new plate can be a drop in replacement with no need for changes in press set up, fount solution or inks used. He also has to deal with questions from end users, even if they defy logic. “One asked “can we make the plates today, store them and put them on press in four weeks’ time?’,” he says. He does not say what the answer was, not why the customer wanted the extensive delay.
The raw material for all printing plates is litho grade aluminium, the purest form of the metal it is possible to buy. This is supplied on reels from Speira in Germany and Bridgnorth in the UK. There is around 7km of aluminium on each reel. Each of the three lines in Osterode is more than 150 metres from unwind to packing. All sit alongside each other. The fastest is MO10 which was first built 20 years ago.
The first step in the process is graining, achieved by a 100-amp high power alternating current creating the pits in the surface of the plate that constitutes its grain. After washing with several rinses of water, the anodising step uses electricity, this time a DC current to create an extra thin, but very hard surface which provides the litho characteristics to the plate. After further washing steps to clean the plate (Kodak does not use brushes for this) the plate is ready to accept its coating or coatings as some plates have two layers. The line will then cut and prepare plates with inset papers ready for packing according to the end use.
There is much use of robots to build corrugated cases for protection as plastic has now been eliminated from much of the process. Nylon straps are still in use, however, but will go whenever feasible.
Kodak is unsurprisingly taciturn on the components of the Sonora coatings suffice to say it involves beads of polymer than can be fused to the plate and a KFC style blend of 13 different components to give the coating the required characteristics. This may be speed of imaging, durability for long runs or harsh press environments, chemical neutrality for food packaging and for a decent shelf life between rolling off the line in Osterode and being put on press in Oswestry for example.
The plate lines are therefore something of a Trigger’s Broom. They look the same as when first installed, but changes to pumps, to coating heads, to dryers and to controls have very much changed. Each line has 5,000 data points that are measured and recorded every two seconds. At all points Kodak is measuring for temperature, pH values, density and conductivity. Fluctuations may be important. Nor are these machines that are available off the shelf, most have been engineered by the team at Osterode.
Two lines have zero speed splicing, the most modern has a flying splice to ensure the line can achieve the highest OEE possible. Maintenance is planned in with rollers needing regular changing and electrodes too needing to be checked.
Some of those elements, especially around the packing section, have been designed by Sven Freyer, the worldwide head of plate production. He joined the business in 1990 as a design engineer having been brought up and educated in the GDR. He moved up through administration and sales, including spells at the Columbus plant, before returning to Osterode in production management, sales, becoming managing director of the German operation and is now in charge of global manufacturing.
The task is to ensure that the same product (Sonora) can be produced to the same standards at each plant. Kodak also has agreements to make plates under licence in China for the local market and for limited export in neighbouring countries in Asia and to Australia.
It is vital to make sure that it is possible to produce the same plate at each site, occasionally resulting in some anomalies. There is latent demand for violet CTP plates but not enough to justify production at all three sites. Consequently demand for violet sensitive plates is now covered by three days a month production in Osterode, at least while demand persists. Production of the even older Thermal News plate has ceased in recent weeks, easing some of the production planning issues that running the site entails. “We are also trying to reduce the variety of packaging we use, so cut the number of standards that we have to work to,” says Freyer. “There are different types of packaging for different customer types, from a single plate upwards. This amounts to 4,000 standards to adhere to. We need to improve our efficiency, so will have to streamline the portfolio and reduce the variety of packaging we support.”
That said there are some peculiarities that are supported. “Some customers are concerned about the grain direction of their plates. This dates back to a time that if the plate was overly bent, there was a risk of cracking. That will not happen any longer, but there is still a demand.”
Freyer is also in charge of the R&D efforts across the three Kodak sites. “There are groups doing substrate research, others are looking at the coatings. It can take three years to develop a new plate in the lab and then longer to scale up production on the plate line. This is why we need the field trials and the beta testing,” he says.
The tools to do this have improved thanks to the way that computers can collect, store and parse data. The operation holds the set of ISO standards to measure management, environmental and energy performance. “We need to reduce energy consumption by 10% over the next five years,” says Freyer. That will reduce the carbon footprint associated with a printing plate, something that customers, seeking to understand their own Scope 3 footprint, are starting to ask about he says.
That is not something that came up when he first joined the business. Then the litho plate was supreme, essential to high quality printing and without a challenger in sight. Now as production volumes shrink to the point that in commercial print at least, digital print technologies can be more effective, the litho plate has to be almost taken for granted thanks to quality, consistency and on press performance. That printers do not need to know how the plate on press acquired these attributes is a tribute to the investment and smooth operation of plants like Osterode.
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