Earlier this month, PrintWeek UK revealed that the Belgian-headquartered group was considering strategic options for its offset solutions business, with CEO Pascal Juery describing current pricing levels in the printing industry as “not sustainable”.

In a statement issued on 23 March, Agfa said that it could not absorb the “magnitude” of rising prices, despite its own internal cost reductions.

“Soaring input costs, particularly relevant to aluminium, energy and packaging materials, in combination with sharply rising freight rates due to global logistic constraints make price increases unavoidable.”

As a result, the price of Agfa’s offset plates will increase between 5% and 10%, effective from 1 April.

“Despite internal cost reductions, the magnitude of rising prices is no longer sustainable. The price increase applied to our customers will be partly offset, as printers will benefit from higher aluminium prices when they recycle their used plates.

“Agfa’s customers highly value our continuous investment in advanced pre-press technology and related services – such as the ECO³ framework which stands for Economy, Ecology and Extra Convenience – which leads to substantial economic benefits in their print shop,” the company added.

Separately, Agfa has also announced an immediate price increase of more than 10% across its entire range of IdeaLine photo-tooling films, which are used in the production of printed circuit boards. This is also due to the increasing costs of production and raw materials, in this case, silver.

(Courtesy: PrintWeek.com)