Executive vice president and main board member for Manroland Sheetfed Raphael Penuela said that the manufacturer’s goal is to provide its customers with "innovative and productive solutions" including digital printing technology.
He added: "Landa’s nano print technology offers the versatility of digital printing together with the qualities and speed of offset printing. It's a great strategic fit."
Penuela went on to suggest that Manroland would retrofit Landa's Nanographic printing technology to its customers' existing Manroland presses.
"Our goal will be to deliver to our customers new digital printing solutions by converting their existing offset presses to Nanography," he said.
Landa founder Benny Landa added: "This new partnership combines the prestigious Manroland brand with the power of Nanography, enabling Manroland's extensive customer base to go digital by converting their existing Manroland presses to Nanography."
No further information was available at the time of writing on how the retrofitting might work or what Manroland press models or configurations it could apply to.
Manroland Australasia managing director Steve Dunwell told ProPrint it was too early to say what the implications for Australia might be.
The partnership between Manroland Sheetfed and Landa Corporation follows the announcement on Friday that Komori is to licence Landa's Nanographic printing technology for use in its next-generation digital presses for the commercial and packaging markets.
Landa said: "In the foreseeable future we will not see a digital printing technology capable of replacing offset for run lengths of tens or hundreds or thousands, but the market demands ever-shorter run lengths as well as the versatility of digital. That’s where Landa Nanographic Printing comes in."
The process uses ink ejectors to create digital ink images and Landa claims it can be used to print on any off-the-shelf substrate, including coated and uncoated paper stocks and plastic packaging films, without requiring any kind of pre-treatment of special coating, and no post-drying.
The manufacturer claims that the technology can produce the lowest cost-per-page digital images in the industry because Nanographic images are only 500 nanometres thick, about half the thickness of offset images.
Further details of Landa's Nanographic printing process and presses are being kept tightly under wraps ahead of the company's Drupa press conference on 2 May.
A spokesman for Landa Corporation confirmed that Landa's nanographic print technology would only be seen on the company's own stand at Drupa and will not be demonstrated by Komori or Manroland.
This article originally appeared at printweek.com
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