Eagle-Tribune Publishing Company has been publishing regional news north of Boston for 100 years, and one of its papers – The Eagle-Tribune – was the only paper with less than 300,000 circulation to win a Pulitzer Prize in 2003. And now the quality of its reporting and publishing promises to get even better with the addition of two new computer-to-plate (CtP) systems from Agfa, according to Dennis Turmel, Eagle-Tribune’s vice president of operations.

The company recently purchased an Agfa :Advantage violet laser-based CtP, and after a short trial period, it decided to purchase a second. The advantages of :Advantage are many, Turmel said. Although he declined to say exactly what he paid for the systems, Turmel said they were easily within reach of a regional publishing company like Eagle-Tribune. Plus, the :Advantage offers a lower cost of ownership than similar laser-based systems in that it has far fewer moving parts, which makes it easier to maintain, and it is highly reliable.

“I’ve heard too many horror stories about high laser replacement costs and short lifespans,” Turmel said. “With violet, I’m back to the same conditions as with my imagesetters, when I never needed to worry about laser cost or replacements. They just don’t fail.”

But the best part is that the new violet diode-based platesetters have given the company’s editorial department more time to get late-breaking news into the paper, a distinct advantage in the competitive regional news business.

With the system, the company can make plates far faster than the 12 minutes it required with the imagesetter. “Now we’re soft-proofing pages and producing them in less than a minute,” Turmel said. “Plus, we spend less time imaging plates.”

For more information, visit Eagle-Tribune here.