Agfa-Gevaert (Agfa Graphics) NV headquartered in Septestraat Mortsel, Belgium will exclusively sponsor a FREE PLATE TRAINING devoted to care, storage, best practice & applications next month. And as part of planning process AGFA Regional Business Manager, Mr. Thibault Dejaiffe was in Lagos recently to hold meetings with AGFA NIGERIA TEAM of Mr. Bankole Odukale of Bancod Limited and Mr. Akin Oduwole of Technology Global Services. WHERE To Print magazine caught up with him on this and other sundry issues. Excerpts:
WHY ARE YOU IN NIGERIA?
I am actually here because of the AGFA FREE PLATE TRAINING 2013, the Azura Chemistry-Free Technology on Computer to Plate (CTP) and the Inkjet segment of Agfa – which I’m responsible for. Our Azura Chemistry-Free solution has received overwhelming support in Nigeria because printers have been enjoying our product. By 2014 we intend to make Nigeria chemical free.
LET’S TALK ABOUT THE INKJET LARGE FORMAT BUSINESS; WITH THE WAY CHINESE MACHINES ARE FLOODING THE NIGERIAN PRINT MARKET, WHAT FUTURE CAN YOU GUARANTEE FOR YOUR INKJET MACHINES?
The Chinese machines may be cheap but what people don’t know is that – cheap may eventually be expensive; when you think of constant breakdown which definitely gulp more money to maintain. Looking at the market from professional angle, we were able to deduce that majority of the good brains in the industry prefer quality print product; and providing quality machines and consumables have been our driving point over the years. In regard of the number of the Chinese machines in the market; we beat Chinese products with our right price level and best customer support.
HOW CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE NIGERIAN MARKET FOR AGFA?
Nigeria still remains our biggest market in Sub-Saharan Africa, due to the strong partnership with the duo of Bancod and Technology Global. They are actually the ones that bring about growth and stability of Agfa products and services in the Nigerian market. Nigeria market demand a lot of attention, it is joy for me to know that Agfa is controlling the largest share of the Nigeria printing market.
WHAT ARE THE NEW AGFA PRODUCTS IN THE MARKET?
To maintain our leadership role, we know it is pertinent for us to always come out with an array of breakthrough products. We also spend a lot of money on the engineering support of all our products in order to ensure that our clients get the best out of all our products. Our recent launch is a State-of-the-art in Inkjet Flat-bed portfolio featuring top of the range large format digital machines. These products are unbeatable in size, capacity and cost-effectiveness.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN FEATURES OF YOUR LARGE FORMAT MACHINES?
All our machines are purely similar in terms of quality, capacity and cost-effectiveness. Our after-sales services can never be compared to all other machines manufacturers in the world. We are proactive in our services and we provide constant training for operators to enable them get the best value from the machines.
LETS TALK ABOUT THE COMING FESPA AND NEW PRODUCTS YOU WILL BE LAUNCHING
FESPA is the biggest show for the screen printing, digital printing and textile printing community. At FESPA 2013 in London, Agfa is launching the JetI TitanX, with its proven moving table flatbed technology. It’s designed as a versatile wide format printing platform that caters for both higher productivity and superior print quality with extreme colour accuracy. We are also going to launch this product in Nigeria at Propak West Africa 2014 because as part of our marketing activities; trade show is a major platform to create awareness and preference to our target market, to let them know what we are doing. At both exhibitions we will be launching new products in both roll-to-roll and flatbed technologies.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME
You’re always welcome!
