Kodak Just Dropped the New SONORA UltraXR Process-Free Plates—Here’s What You Need to Know
Kodak is mixing things up again with its process-free plate lineup, officially introducing the new KODAK SONORA UltraXR. If you’re a printer running shop in the EAMER region (Europe, Africa, and the Middle East), take note: these new plates are stepping in to completely replace the older SONORA XTRA-2 and XTRA-2 for Newspapers models, which are being phased out and discontinued.
So, What’s Actually Different?
The UltraXR is basically an upgrade to the existing SONORA Ultra family, and Kodak packed some pretty solid performance boosts into it. If you’ve ever struggled with reading low-contrast plates on a busy shop floor, this should be a welcome change.
Here is a quick look at the specs they are throwing around:
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Way Better Contrast: The image contrast on these is up to 4x stronger than what else is out there on the market. It makes visual checking a whole lot easier before the plates hit the press.
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Longer Storage Life: You get 5x better tolerance to white light exposure, and the image stays stable for up to 6 weeks if you keep them stored in the dark.
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Solid Run Lengths: These things are rated to hold up for a decent chunk of volume:
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Up to 400,000 impressions on heatset or coldset web presses.
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Up to 250,000 impressions on sheetfed setups.
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Up to 115,000 impressions if you are running UV-ink applications.
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Shipped Closer to Home
Kodak is keeping the production for these localized, manufacturing them out of their facility in Osterode, Germany. If you are operating in Europe or the wider EAMER region, that’s good news for supply chain reliability. It keeps delivery turnarounds tight and cuts down on the massive carbon footprint that comes with shipping heavy pallets of aluminum plates halfway across the globe.
Jim Continenza, Kodak’s CEO, basically summed it up by saying they’ve poured millions into R&D to keep pushing process-free tech forward. According to him, the best part of this transition for offset printers is that they are getting a significantly upgraded, higher-performing plate without a price hike—it’s coming in at no additional cost.