ED: What is so exciting about this new thermal plate?
CM: It is not often that a South African distributor is chosen to test a new product from one of the world`s major imaging corporations. Kemtek, however, was in a unique position to do so. We have sold numerous thermal plates and frankly, none, with the possible exception of Mitsubishi (whilst they were in the business) suited our business model as leading suppliers of computer-to-plate equipment. When Konica Minolta, who have been in the imaging chemistry business since 1873, and whom we represent for graphic arts film, offered us this opportunity, we readily accepted to be a test site.
ED: What led up to Konica Minolta allowing Kemtek in South Africa as a test site?
VR: Some months ago we were in Tokyo visiting the top executives in the Export Department of Konica Minolta. We complained that we were disappointed with our present thermal plate supplier. They were unable to satisfy our customers` demands for consistent quality of manufacturing. Knowing Konica`s superb quality and consistency of their graphic arts emulsions, we naturally enquired whether they had plans for marketing a wet thermal plate. The good news was that there were more than plans and that the product would soon be ready to be launched. Konica Minolta`s management felt very confident about the product.
ED: What exactly took place after this meeting?
CM: Well, we were more or less sworn to secrecy as the product was still under company evaluation. They insisted they would need to do extensive evaluation tests with a selected customer base and with one or two selected distributors or associated companies. They stated that we could well be considered as a test site for two major reasons:
(a) Our vast experience with many of the thermal plates on the market and our strong position in the computer-to-plate equipment market with Screen, and (b) South Africa was remote enough from the major markets to enable a greater degree of secrecy in the test phase.
ED: Now that the plate has been released in South Africa, would you share your test results?
VR: We are certainly very happy to do so. At first we worked in our own facility and as we gained more and more confidence with the product, Konica instructed us to supply the product to a large web offset user and a large sheeted user. They also required us to implore the two chosen users to keep this testing phase as secret as possible within their organisation. Both of these customers were amazing and not only honoured their undertaking, but gave us every opportunity to explore the efficacy of the product in actual production.
ED: For the benefit of our readers, can you be more explicit about your findings?
CM: We set ourselves a task of understanding what our customers needs were and how much of these needs were satisfied by the product. Our findings were as follows:
a. We needed a plate that was really capable of high resolution with an ability to hold a 1 to 99% dot and also to be able to cope with the FM screening techniques.
b. We wanted to find wide development latitude, which, in our opinion, is critical for customers. We found the Konica Minolta plate to have extremely wide processing latitude, in fact, far better than any other product we have seen. This guarantees high print quality and repeatability in the manufacturing of plates in our customers` plants.
c. We wanted a plate that gave long life and clean working and a chemistry system which does not require frequent change. At present we are experiencing the processing of over 1500 m^2 without a chemistry change, but we have yet to discover with further experience, the limits of this advantage. Incidentally, the chemistry is truly clean working and we have not noticed any ablation problems with this plate.
d. We wanted a strong hardy consistent thermal coating. The emulsion on this plate so far seems to indicate that we are achieving well over double the required run length usually expected from a thermal plate. In addition, the plates have a great resistance to attack by press chemistries.
e. We have run unbaked plates for runs of well over 200,000, however, the plate bakes exceptionally well and on a web offset press, we have already run a baked plate for over 1,5 million impressions.
f. Finally, we wanted to find consistency from batch to batch and we understand now that Konica Minolta`s manufacturing method seems to ensure a very great consistency.
ED: You sound very upbeat about your product and I can begin to understand why you feel that your company has played an important role in assessing its efficacy.
VR: Thank you for those kind words. I have been in this business a long time and frankly, in my 46 years of experience, I cannot recall being more excited about a product than this new thermal plate from Konica Minolta.
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