Vibixa boosts efficiency with Fujifilm low-chemistry plate investment

Carton printing company Vibixa has purchased low-chemistry plates from Fujifilm in a bid to reduce its use of energy and chemicals.

The Cheltenham-based company, which has an annual turnover of around £15m, installed a Fujifilm FLH-ZII 125 ZAC processor and switched to Fuji's Brillia HD LH-PJE plates after a 12-month consultation process with different plate manufacturers.

Vibixa decided to purchase the non-baked plates after measuring how much electricity its baking oven used and working out how much money the company could save by cutting back on electricity and chemical use.

Robin Shallcroft, manufacturing manager at Vibixa, said: "We had Kodak plates before but we wanted to switch to non-baked. We looked at different models but heard the best feedback about the plates we chose from Fujifilm."

The new plates have enabled the company to make significant savings on its electricity and chemical expenditure, he added.

Vibixa estimates that the removal of the baking process has made the platemaking process 12% quicker and led to flatter, less distorted plates that were easier to load onto its Manroland large-format printing press.

The company said the low-chemistry plates were more flexible as deletions could be made on the press, using a Fujifilm CTP Deletion Pen, without having to re-image the plate.

The run length of the new plates is 100,000 impressions.