Agfa acquiring Pitman, What’s the Impact on Wide Format?

Last week Agfa announced that it has acquired Pitman Company. While this deal was probably much more about the distribution of Pitman’s more traditional line of business, prepress materials, it nevertheless has a lot of implications for the wide format and industrial inkjet market because of Pitman’s prominence in wide format.

Agfa highlighted some of their other activities that extend their stake in the wide format graphics market such as their Chinese joint venture with Shenzhen brothers in China, their acquisition of Gandi and their increased stake in Dilli, their Korean manufacturing partner for their Anapurna Wide format UV-curable printers. Pitman is by almost any measure the leading distributor of wide format equipment and supplies in the United States and one of the top dealers of wide format graphics printers for Canon, Epson and HP for aqueous inkjet and EFI in the UV-curable inkjet segment. Agfa doesn’t sell any low-end wide format aqueous inkjet printers like Canon, Epson and HP so it seems that only EFI might expect some changes based on the wide format printers that Agfa has, particularly since its acquisition of Gandi. EFI had no comment on the impact of the Agfa-Pitman deal. Also, at FESPA Agfa launched an 80-inch wide printer, the Anapurna 2050, that adds to the overlap between the Agfa & Agfa-Gandi printers with EFI-VUTEk printers. The Anapurna 2050 will be on display at the upcoming Graph Expo and SGIA shows and available around that time. A quick comparison of their respective wide format products, with their rated running speeds and other specifications, is in the table below.

Agfa went on to say that the acquisition of Pitman expands and diversifies its presence and creates a far larger addressable market in the U.S. because Pitman has already been expanding into industrial print. Agfa’s Dotrix Modular system is a robust industrial inkjet printer for use in the packaging, POP, and label printing markets. Through Pitman, Agfa believes it has a unique opportunity to grow its industrial inkjet business in the U.S. market.

Pitman has 16 locations and 502 employees and is headquartered in New Jersey, as is Agfa in the United States. Pitman was privately held by the Schmidt family. The two companies have done business with Pitman selling Agfa’s products for more than 50 years. With its newly acquired assets, its revamped product line and its existing intellectual property in inks and systems integration, Agfa has become a very strong competitor in the wide format and industrial inkjet markets in 2010.

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