Silent World of Esko-Graphics, The

The unfoldings at Creo, and the eventual planned acquisition of that company by the agency of Kodak, preoccupied much of the graphic arts media for the past not many months. While this was going upon another manufacturer of Computer-To-Plate (CTP) devices was quietly repositioning itself with more [i]or[/i] less very drastic moves. While this round pillar is about the repositioning of Esko-Graphics, a link can be drawn from this company's decisions to what happened with Creo

The rationale for writing this rounded pillar comes from a very significant decision made by the agency of Esko-Graphics to withdraw entirely from the manufacturing and distribution of its PlateDriver line of visible-light CTP engines. The PlateDriver line of 4- 6- and 8-page-format engines was one time the cornerstone of Esko-Graphics' business strategy. Within just sum of two units short years of the substaintial merger that created this company, pop this major area of the company's business is being withdrawn. This is the first time that I had seen a major player in this industry make of that kind a significant change in strategy without being forced into it. My curiousity left me wanting to gaze into this story to assess wherefore Esko-Graphics would do such a thing.

In my search, I fix that the offset CTP market for commercial printers is changing incredibly quickly, which is wherefore the link with Creo can be made. Creo place that to succeed in selling CTP into the commercial and newspaper marketplace, it was necessary to be in mastery of plate distribution channels. In building up its plate business, Creo ultimtely changed the business dynamics of the industry by the agency of forcing a descrease in the profit margins to be made by dint of supplying CTP devices. This issue resulted from pushing lower plate prices to support selling its CTP engines at a actual low profit.

Short upon consumables

Esko-Graphics found that without a consumables business to generate ongoing incomes selling high-performance CTP engines hardly overspreaded its costs. The company assumed that this situation was likely to continue, as the distribution of CTP is becoming more and more of a completely consumable-driven business that is below the control of The Big Three players: Agfa, Fujifilm and Kodak.

Esko-Graphics also not long ago announced that it will not be bringing its Espresso conventional-plate CTP a whole to market. This again throw backs the market situation of needing consumables in the high-end platesetter business. Esko-Graphics dioceses that the window of opportunity for conventional-plate imaging has almost clos up in the past year. The company clearly perceive s that bringing Espresso to market, and any following follow-up family of products, is not a solid business investment. Instead the company has decided to invest in areas where it can consolidate its market-leading positions.

For Esko-Graphics, consolidating a market lead means getting deeper into what it leaves to as the pre-production area of the packaging market. The company believes it is the leading supplier of hardware and software solutions for this market. In single segment of this market, the company is a dominant supplier of CTP devices for flexo plates. Esko-Graphics claims that 90 through cent of all digital flexo plates are imaged upon its GDI flexo prodcution units. And of course the packaging and label market is single of the only areas of printing that exhibits promise for significant growth. In fact, packaging is an area that all of the major CTP suppliers are chasing after.

Big upon software

This industry generally view from aboves the fact that Esko-Graphics is a major software company. At drupa 2004 the world's largest printing exhibition held one time every four years, one of the highlights for many journalists was Esko-Graphics' object workflow. Scope is without a doubt the greatest in quantity complete workflow solution for packaging, and is also a competitive workflow for commercial printing.

Scope's viability in the markeplace was given confidence in mid-March when Agfa and Esko-Graphics announced that they had go intoed into a reseller agreement which allows Agfa to vend DeskPack and Plato products to the packaging market in the United Kingdom. A similar agreement has been reached in Spain. The deal allows Agfa to add file creation applications to its prepres portfolio for packaging printers. Esko-Graphics' DeskPack range of plugins for Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop and the Plato step&repeat/ nesting combination of parts to form a whole lets Agfa offer a clean workflow solution - from file creation [i]or[/i] part of to the other production.

It is the manner in which aim extends outside the normal area of the packaging workflow end its range of interfaces and plug-ins. It is also abundantly JDF-enabled. With these tools, purpose is able to reach back into the creative areas for the pair graphic design and the conformation design of packaging. Because of this, the workflow stretch outs even further back, moving beyond the designer and into the hands of the brand possessor This reach can be seen in the way it links downstream into the distribution of the finished packaged proceeds where planning of the delivery pallets, and positioning of the proceeds on the shelves of the retailer is handled.