Platesetting record set at Onlineprinters
Agfa’s Avalon N8-80 platesetter breaks the one million mark
Onlineprinters has achieved a technical record: One of their platesetters, the Avalon N8-80 model by Agfa, has imaged more than one million printing plates. “No other Agfa platesetter has mastered such a challenge before! This is a great achievement that is certainly only possible in the online printing market,” smiles Heinz Rintermann, key account manager at Agfa Graphics. The online printing shop receives several thousand printing jobs daily, which are collected and run in batches. This is what made it possible for a platesetter to break the one million mark, especially in just five short years. In 2015 alone, 2.1 billion pieces of printed matter were produced this way, the majority of them in offset printing. Collect-run printing allows for particularly efficient production of printed matter and results in favourable pricing. Onlineprinters’ 15 online shops offer products such as business cards, flyers, folded cards, posters, brochures and catalogues to customers in 30 European countries, as well as print products in large formats, such as tarpaulins and even entire exhibition booths. “We produce all our products in-house. This applies to both offset and digital printing, but also to the LFP sector. This is very important to us, as well as to many of our clients, who also frequently come from the field of graphics and re-sell our products,” explains Thomas Emmer, the person responsible for print control at Onlineprinters. “Since we process a very high number of orders every day, we also need a lot of plates. We are very happy that one of our platesetters holds the record!”
Maintenance and service ensure maximum availability
The record-holding platesetter was bought in 2011, at a time when the company was opening up new markets as part of a global expansion effort, and shops focussed on nations such as France and Spain were being brought online. This increased the volume of orders so much that it became necessary to invest in new print machines and prepress technology. The Avalon N8-80 can image plates in the three formats of 1055 x 811 mm, 1030 x 790 mm and 890 x 790 mm. Since it went into operation, the platesetter has been available for 98 percent of the time. “This is due in no small part to Agfa’s excellent customer service,” praises Fabian Hablowetz, CTP team coordinator at Onlineprinters. Standard maintenance of the machine is performed twice a year. Classical wear parts such as the clamps used to hold the plates are exchanged after several tens of thousands of imaging processes. “The platesetter runs non-stop, 24 hours a day, over three shifts. Our requirements are correspondingly high,” indicates Hablowetz. According to Agfa, the platesetter’s high reliability is in part due to the fact that Onlineprinters exclusively uses consumables and plates produced by Agfa Graphics. The record-holding platesetter continues to be in use, and Onlineprinters plans further investments in technology.
Press contact:Patrick Piecha
Head of Press & Public Relations
press@onlineprinters.com
Tel.: +49 9161 6209807