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Asahi Photoproducts European Conference focuses on the future

Asahi Photoproducts recently celebrated its 40 Year Anniversary of the company at a Conference for its employees.  Thirty Asahi representatives from nine countries spent two days in Athens, Greece meeting their counterparts and Senior Management team from Japan.  The conference reflected on the milestones of the past 40 years and brought the team together to plan the future growth and innovation strategy of the organisation.

Asahi Photoproducts is a leader in the production of photopolymer plates for the flexographic printing industry. The company was a world pioneer in the development of photopolymer plate technology, launching a water washable photopolymer APR plate & plate making system in 1971 in Japan.  Subsequently launched in Europe 1973, the company has had a proud history of technical innovation and service excellence over the past 40 years.

Dr. Dieter Niederstadt, Technical Marketing Manager, comments, “Asahi Photoproducts is totally dedicated to supporting our customers.  From our Japanese cultural roots, we understand the importance of service, as well as great product solutions.  ‘Omotenashi’ in Japanese literally means to “entertain guests wholeheartedly”.  For our business we translate this meaning in completely understanding our customers’ needs and requirements to ensure that our customers feel that they have a high level of satisfaction and delight in everything we do.

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“The Asahi AWP plate solution is a great example of our belief in ‘Omotenashi’.  We took time to listen to our customers and we understood that a breakthrough technology was needed to enable the industry to improve its pressroom efficiencies; keeping the printing press uptime high by reducing the plate cleaning intervals, was key to this step. Working with the scientists at our Japanese Parent Company to engineer our own polymers, Asahi is delivering the AWP water washable plate technology to market to great success.”

The conference was an opportunity for the company to look back at its history – from pioneering the first photopolymer plate in 1971 and delivering the world’s first solid plate AFP and plate making system AFP1500 consist of “both side exposure method” and “germicidal light finishing post exposure method” in 1984 which became de factor technology through this industry, to today’s pioneering of “Pinning top” technology to control surface energy on plates for better press performance.

Dr. Niederstadt continued: “By looking at our past successes and understanding that the voice of the customer is core to everything we do, we have learned a lot about what will deliver us success going forward.”

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