中文A quiet shift that changes who makes your plates
If you buy printing plates in the UK or Europe, something just changed under your feet — and you probably didn’t hear it happen. On 28 August, Fujifilm quietly finalized the sale of its Chinese plate manufacturing business to a Chinese group called Huangshan Jinruitai Technology, known as JRT. The deal was confirmed publicly on 9 September, but the ink was dry weeks ago.
This is not a small tidy-up. JRT is getting a licence to use Fujifilm product brands and certain intellectual property, including patents. That means the plates you may know under the Superia name, and the processless and low-chemistry plates Fujifilm has been pushing hard in Europe, will soon flow through a very different sales and production structure.
Who is JRT, and why does it matter
JRT is no stranger to plates. The company was founded 20 years ago and focuses on developing and manufacturing printing plates — CTP plates, computer-to-conventional plates, double- and triple-coated plates, low-chemical plates, and process-free plates. It already runs four high-speed automated production lines: two at its Huangshan facility and two at its Changxing, Huzhou site.
In other words, this is not a financial buyer with no clue about chemistry. It is a plate maker buying another plate maker’s capacity and brand licence. That matters, because the risk in these deals is usually that the new owner can’t actually make the product. JRT can.
What JRT is not getting is the right to sell everywhere. The deal explicitly excludes Japan, the United States, Canada and Mexico. Fujifilm keeps its Japanese plate plant running and continues to serve those excluded territories directly. And the new name floating around Chinese industry circles for the acquired offset plate business is “F&J Plate” — Fujifilm and JRT, stitched together.
Reading the tea leaves for European buyers
For printers in the UK and Europe, the practical question is simple: will my plates show up, and will they be the same? The honest answer is “mostly yes, with a transition to watch.”
The transfer of all equity in Fujifilm Printing Plate (China) Co is scheduled to complete by the end of this year. But the messier part — shifting the sales and related business functions for the regions in the deal — is expected to wrap up only in the first half of 2027. So for the next year or so, you are in a handover zone. Orders, support, and billing may move between organizations. Smart buyers will keep a close eye on their supply and maybe build a little buffer stock of critical plate sizes.
There is also a longer story here. Fujifilm closed its European plate plant in Tilburg, the Netherlands, back in 2023, and stopped making plates in the US in 2022. Manufacturing has been concentrating in Japan — and now, through this deal, in China too. Fujifilm says the reorganisation “will further accelerate the consolidation and optimisation of global production sites for printing plate materials, with manufacturing operations concentrated in Japan.” The China business, by Fuji’s own admission, accounted for less than 1% of worldwide sales, with immaterial operating profit. So this is about focus, not distress.
The bigger picture: East moves West, again
Step back and you see a pattern that has been repeating across print for a decade. High-volume, chemistry-heavy manufacturing keeps migrating toward Asian suppliers who can run automated lines at scale. Western brands keep the engineering, the brand, and often the patents — then licence or partner to stay competitive on price and delivery.
For plate buyers, that is not automatically bad. JRT’s automated lines should keep plates flowing, and competition tends to keep prices honest. But it does mean your “Fujifilm” plate is increasingly a Chinese-made product wearing a Japanese brand licence. If you have spent years tuning your pressroom to a specific plate’s behaviour, that is worth noting. Brand licence does not always mean identical production line.
What to do now
Don’t panic, but don’t sleep either. Three moves make sense for any printer who runs Fujifilm plates in Europe:
- Talk to your supplier. Ask directly who will own your account after the H1 2027 sales transfer, and what changes, if any, are expected in product spec or lead time.
- Qualify a backup. Even if you love the plate, having a second source spec’d and tested is cheap insurance against a clumsy handover.
- Watch the brand. “F&J Plate” may become the name on the box. Make sure your purchasing system and your press operators recognize it as the same product family.
Fujifilm’s leadership struck an upbeat tone. Naoki Hama, president of Fujifilm Business Innovation, called the move part of “accelerating our transformation toward a solutions-driven business model.” That transformation also includes spinning off the ¥1,175 billion Business Innovation wing as a separate listed company. So today’s plate sale is one tile in a much larger mosaic.
For now, the presses keep running and the plates keep coming. But the hands that make them have changed — and in print, that is never just a detail.
Source: Printweek — “JRT acquires Fujifilm’s Chinese plate factory, will take over European sales” (9 September 2026).
