• Inkjet strategy provides Agfa with a new platform for sustained profitable growth.
• Innovative wide-format and digital screen printers, using Agfa proprietary inks, available as of 3rd quarter 2005.

Mortsel (Belgium) and Munich (Germany), May 31, 2005 – 8.00 a.m. CET

Agfa announced today a major step in its strategy to become a leader in the industrial inkjet printing market. Agfa earlier established multiple joint development and manufacturing partnerships with Thieme, Mutoh Europe and Xaar.   By combining these partnerships with its own in-house imaging, ink and printing expertise, Agfa is now ready to introduce a series of wide-format and digital screen printing systems. Thus, Agfa meets its objectives to provide its customers with the means to innovate and grow profitably by making the printed medium more competitive.

Stefaan Vanhooren, President of Agfa’s Graphic Systems business group, said:  “We believe in the power of print. We see an increase in media volume and a growing demand for differentiation, which will have a positive impact on the continued growth of print. With our cost-effective innovations in inkjet we support these market trends”.
The industrial inkjet market is estimated at 2 billion Euros and is expected to multiply in the next few years.

Agfa has strong credentials in chemistry, dispersion technology, imaging and printing expertise. Specifically for inkjet, Agfa build up application competencies in the proofing pre-press offering. 

The partnerships with Thieme, Mutoh and Xaar, enable Agfa to bring groundbreaking, industrial inkjet systems to market.

Today, at the Fespa Fair in Germany, Agfa launched two co-developed products, M-Press and Anapurna, which set an industry benchmark combining high-quality with unrivaled performance.

The M-Press is the first hybrid UV inkjet press that is fully automated and high-speed, combining the benefits of digital printing and screen-printing. This combination gives customers two main advantages: long digital run lengths of higher quality and higher profit for applications such as banners, displays or decoration printing.

The new Anapurna 100 printer, co-developed with Mutoh Europe, is a wide-format printer for high-volume industrial inkjet operations such as posters, billboards and signage printing. The combination of precision printheads, developed by Agfa and Xaar, and Agfa’s new UV-curable Anapurna inkjet inks offers exceptional color quality and excellent scratch resistance on a wide range of flexible and rigid media, all at very high speeds.

“We became market leader in pre-press by offering complete innovative solutions to our customers, wherever in the world. It is our intention to do the same for inkjet”, said Stefaan Vanhooren.