Agfa tapped Austrian publisher Mediaprint to test its forthcoming chemistry-free violet plates.

Mediaprint publishes a wide range of newspapers including four dailies.

Agfa said Mediaprint will run the plates through a number of tests over the next several months. Commercial availability of the non-ablative plates is expected in the second quarter of 2008.

The chemistry-free plate work with low-power violet diodes engineered to produce a strong image contrast with no on-press contamination, Agfa said.

Eliminates developers

The plates also eliminate the use of pH developers commonly used in traditional plate processing.

In early Mediaprint evaluations, Agfa is seeing run lengths of up to 200,000 with “excellent” quality and press performance, said Andy Grant, Agfa’s worldwide newspaper segment manager.

“There are important environmental benefits, too, and when those are combined with the plates’ reliability and low cost of operation, what we have is exactly what newspaper production personnel have been waiting for,” Grant said.