Agfa to stop making platesetters in Massachusetts
150 jobs to be eliminated in the months ahead in Wilmington
Half of the 300 jobs at Agfa Graphics’ Wilmington, Mass., facility will be eliminated in the coming months once all orders for new platesetters are completed, bringing an end to Agfa’s role as a manufacturer for computer-to-plate machinery.

Agfa will begin selling branded platesetters that are built by other manufacturers. Details of that agreement will be made public during Agfa’s pre-drupa press conference on March 18.

Susan Wittner, marketing director for Agfa Graphics at its U.S. headquarters in Ridgefield, N.J., said the decision for Agfa to stop making its own platesetters is part of a broader strategy where Agfa will focus on sales and service of its large base of installed CTP equipment in the commercial printing and newspaper industries.

“We are committed to our customers and we will continue to service them and our installed base of equipment,” she said. “Even new platesetters that are installed this year will be serviced for seven years. Customers are buying CTP solutions and we will be there to take care of them. We are simply no longer going to manufacture plate setters and instead will have another vendor make them for us and we will sell them as Agfa equipment.”

She added that Agfa continues to be one of the world’s leading manufacturers of printing plates and that Agfa’s Branchburg, N.J. plant is being expanded to increase plate-making capacity to respond to market demand for plates.

“We will be there for our customers,” she said.

Original announcement in January
“This decision is part of our strategy to substantially improve our operational efficiency and competitive position in the highly competitive market of prepress equipment,” Agfa Graphics President Stefaan Vanhooren said when the closing was first announced in January.

Agfa Graphics will continue to distribute total solutions to its customers (including a new range of printing plates, equipment, software and service) and has extended its OEM relationship with one of the main manufacturers of commercial computer-to-plate equipment.