Rupert Murdoch puts Konica Minolta US out of film business

News Limited's takeover of Wall Street Journal triggers CTP upgrade for Dow Jones plants across America.

Ditching the antiquated prepress system in a phased transfer to CTP takes out one of  Konica Minolta's largest remaining film customers in the USA. The anticpated dramatic drop in film consumption has led Konica Minolta to cease taking orders from March 2009. Historically, Konica Minolta has been one of the largest film suppliers to newspapers, but it will now only focus on digital plates in the US.

Locally Konica Minolta film is supplied by Ferag to a range of smaller commercial customers, all the leading newspapers in Australia and New Zealand having the jump to CTP way ahead of the US. The local film is supplied out of Konica Minolta's Japanese manufacturing plants and there is no indication the company intends to cease manufacturing.

"We'll know more of their intentions after we meet with them in the near future," said Thomas Klump, Ferag managing director. "But we will continue to supply our customers."

The market for fillm is in steady decline but both Agfa and Fujifilm, along with Konica Minolta continue to supply the remaining holdouts.

Garry Muratore, business manager at Agfa described film as a strong market for the company. "There is still a solid demand for film," he said. "We are still in the game and not considering getting out of it."

Peter Carrigan, Fujifilm described the company's market as steady. "We're ready to supply anyone with film."