Landa’s commercial rollout underway; drupa commitment made

With years of research and development into nanography done, Landa Digital Printing is now transitioning itself to a more market-oriented company with the developer building infrastructure to support the hundreds of presses it says will soon be installed all over the world.

The company’s charismatic founder and the inventor of Indigo technology, Benny Landa, and CEO Arik Gordon recently hosted a Q&A session with printers from across the globe tuning in for the latest company update.

Printing will never the same again: Benny Landa

Digital journey

Landa said he invented the nanographic printing process to fill a gap that he could see in the digitisation journey of offset printing.

“Twenty years ago I sold Indigo to Hewlett Packard and Indigo continues to be the digital printing market leader to this day,” Landa said during the Q&A.

“But it continues to focus on niche markets like photo albums, custom labels and short run jobs and that’s why I started Landa Digital Printing – to focus on mainstream printing. Printing will never by the same again.”

Gordon said there is no plan to change the strategic direction of Landa Digital Printing, other than the continued transition to developing a more market-oriented company.

“Only three per cent of the pages printed today are printed digitally so our strategy will not change to bring printing into the digital area,” Gordon said.

“This is what Landa was founded for and that is not going to change. When I joined I found a great organisation, dedicated and they believe in it.

“Now we are meeting the market transition from technology development to a

Landa S10 Nanographic Printing Press

market oriented company so we must have more focus on customers, build infrastructure to support the hundreds of presses that will be out there.”

Installations of the sheetfed S10 commercial press began in mid-2019 across Europe, North America and Asia and have continued on during parts of the pandemic with the number expected to grow.

Simian, a large online printing group based in The Netherlands, recently installed an S10 and said the press fits in well with its two Komori offset presses and three HP Indigo digital presses which all run 24 hours a day. The Landa Digital Press filled a gap in the production at Simian and made economic sense to use it for particularly for jobs, for example an order for 1000 leaflets.

The company’s flexible packaging press, the webfed W10, which can print on a variety of substrates from the thinnest of plastics to foil will enter beta-testing in 2021.

“There is a very clear market need for digital flexible packaging. It is demanding because it requires superb quality, high speed but you also need to be able to print on a huge range of materials from thin plastic films, foils, paper and cardboards. You have to have compatibility with the laminating materials,” Landa said.

“The W10 does all of this. We expect to have our first W10 pre-beta installation in 2021. The flexible packaging industry too will never by the same again.”

S10 product manager Yarden Ben-Dor provided an overview of the press, which includes a Komori sheet transfer system.

“The S10 has mainstream folding carton applications and combines the robustness of offset with all the digital capabilities you will need,” Ben-Dor said.

“It runs at new offset speeds of 6,500 sheets per hour and it runs at offset format B1 or 41 inches. Using our four to seven colour printing process you can reach the widest gamut in the industry.”

Commitment to drupa

In the session, Landa also said Landa Digital Printing would be at drupa, so long as the health of staff and customers could be guaranteed.

Landa waiting in the wings prior to presenting in the Landa theatre at Drupa 2016

He spoke of his love of drupa and how it is often where people fall in love with a type of technology, even if they don’t decide to actually make a purchase until a few years down the track.

“I love drupa,” Landa declared.

“drupa has emerged as the industry trade show in fact it is the only trade show that LDP has ever participated in. We haven’t shown our products at any other trade show and the reason is that with hundreds of thousands of visitors it is the place to communicate our messages and share our vision and educate our market about what is possible.

“In the last 25 years of my career whenever a customer signs an order I always ask the customer when did you make your mental decision to buy our product. Invariably the customer says I fell in love with the technology when I saw you at drupa in 2012 or 2016.

“People fall in love at drupa, they fall in love with the company and the vision.

“So yes we definitely plan to participate in the next drupa subject only of course to the prevailing health situation if we feel it is safe for our employees and safe for our visitors of course we will be there.”

Landa said if there had been any silver lining of the pandemic, it was that the company had learnt how to communicate with customers online.

To view the Q&A online, please click here.

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