The deal sees Landa agreeing to license Komori Corporation to manufacture and market digital printing presses for commercial and other printing markets using Landa’s Nanographic Printing process, which employs water-based inks.
Yoshiharu Komori, Komori president, chairman and chief executive officer, says, “As a specialist manufacturer of printing presses for many years, Komori Corporation provides printing systems that are capable of producing a wide range of printed goods for the commercial, packaging and currency printing markets. We see growing demand for variable data printing and personalisation, especially for niche applications, which we are addressing with our already-announced digital on demand solutions. However, there is also ever-growing customer demand for shorter and shorter run lengths as well as very short turnaround times.
“To meet these commercial printing market needs, we have embraced Landa Nanographic Printing as a powerful solution for our next generation sheet fed and web fed digital systems that use water-based inks. Moreover, this decision accords with Komori’s new policy of operating as a print engineering service provider to meet various future-oriented demands from customers.”
The companies claim the new process combines the versatility of digital with the qualities and speed of offset printing – at unmatched cost per page. Benny Landa, founder of Landa Nanographic, says, “We have enjoyed an intimate relationship with Komori, which is our supplier of paper handling platforms for our new Nanographic sheetfed presses. Komori was the first to be exposed to our technology and was the first to share our vision.
“I am therefore particularly delighted that Komori is the first-to-be-announced global strategic partner with whom we will be sharing this huge market opportunity. With its highly respected position in the printing industry and its broad market access, Komori is well placed to accelerate the worldwide adoption of Landa Nanographic printing.”
Based on the strategic partnership, Landa will provide Komori with Nanographic Printing technology and Landa NanoInk, which lie at the heart of the process. The company says that the nano-pigments, comprised of pigment particles only tens of nanometres in size, are powerful absorbers of light, which improves image quality, according to Landa, which adds that the process employs ultra-sharp dots of extremely high uniformity, high gloss fidelity and the broadest CMYK colour gamut. It also uses ink ejectors to create the digital ink images which get applied to the printing stock in a process that can operate at high speeds. Landa says it can print on any off-the-shelf substrate, from coated and uncoated paper stocks to recycled carton; from newsprint to plastic packaging films, without requiring any kind of pre-treatment or special coating or post-drying. It expects the Nanographic images, at 500 nanometres thick, about half the thickness of offset images, will produce the lowest cost-per-page digital images in the industry.
Benny Landa adds, “Komori’s decision to adopt Nanography for its next generation of digital presses is an important milestone in the march of this innovative technology and significantly broadens its potential to become the new industry standard for mainstream printing.”
Local Komori supplier, Ferrostaal New Zealand, anticipates great interest in the technology. Ian Gillanders, general manager equipment sales at Ferrostaal New Zealand, says, “This is fantastic news and we expect this technology to change the face of the industry over time. We are really looking forward to seeing it at drupa.”
Comment below to have your say on this story.
If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.
Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter