Mag printer Heron is staring a film-free future in the face: By the end of January printer ET Heron should be almost totally digital. Barney Cox tracks the firm's progress. (Profile).(Brief Article)

By the end of this month, once it has migrated the last four of its titles to CTP, Essex-based web printer ET Heron will be "as close as humanly possible" to running a totally film-free pre-press workflow. Over the past four years, under pre-press director David Brown, the firm has grown from producing one digitally supplied job into a pre-press operation running one of the world's largest Agfa Apogee workflows, which is capable of producing 500 plates per day for seven presses.

In the plate room there are three platesetters, an Agfa Galileo VXT - installed in November 2000 to supply the firm's three MAN Roland Rotomans and its Baker Perkins G14 press - and two Luscher XPose! 180 machines with a robotic plate handling …