There's something reassuring about visiting manufacturing plants. I've spent so much of my professional life managing and presenting information that seeing something tangible being made makes a vital connection.
So walking into Fujifilm's Tilburg plate facility seeing that work was already underway on the near €100m PS10 plate line and third on the site, (due to come online toward the end of next year or start of 2010) puts a spring in one's step.
Tilburg is a good news story for European print. PS10 was originally to be built in China. But the sheer size of the European print industry caused Fujfilm to change that decision and make Tilburg the "largest offset plate production facility in the world," according Senior Supervisor Jack Schellekens.
The bosses in Tokyo have placed a lot of trust in Tilburg. For one thing Fujifilm Manufacturing Europe BV now has a European president - Peter Struik - something of a first in a world where many Japanese companies tend to ship in Japanese execs to head up their international divisions.
It also evidenced by the fact that PS10 will be producing Fujifilm's newest digital plates, both processless and chemistry-free, and more importantly, it is expected that a greater emphasis will be placed on R&D at the facility. The company is already working with a Polish university on research projects (it already employs a significant number of Polish staff). So while Tilburg will serve Europe, Africa, and potentially some areas beyond, it may also end up the source of entirely new plate products for global markets.
All this begs the questions why Europe, and specifically why Tilburg? To answer the first, while there may be fewer printers and less print volume, countering this trend is a greater use of short run work and colour. Plate volumes are up. For the second, Tilburg is situated on some of the purest water around, pumped up from 250m underground.