Never one to shy away from a big fight, Benny Landa, father of digital printing, is aiming to replace all offset printing with his revolutionary Landa Nanographic Printing Presses.
While other digital press manufacturers are content to harvest the portion of offset printing that is suitable to the technology – short run, on-demand and personalised printing – Landa claims his Nanography can beat mainstream offset in every sector. The incredibly thin laminate ink that drives the Landa process is designed to print at offset speed on any substrate. At a demonstration last week in Israel, Landa proclaimed the quality issues that bedevilled the launch at the last drupa have now been resolved.
"We expect visitors to our stand at drupa to be completely blown away by the amazing performance of these products – for which we will be taking orders," says Landa, the Indigo founder who's chairman of Landa Group.
"Our presses will start shipping in early 2017. Fourteen years of nanotechnology research has enabled us to make tremendous breakthroughs in the quality, speed and cost of printing. Landa Nanographic Printing Presses produce offset quality, and now at offset speeds and offset-competitive cost per print - on virtually any paper stock. This research has also spawned a new technology, Nano-Metallography, which will enable metallization graphics at less than half the cost of foil."
Landa will double the size of its drupa 2016 stand to 3,000 m2 and will run live demonstrations of all of its Nanographic Printing® Presses, including the Landa S10 sheetfed press - running at 13,000 B1 sheets per hour - for folding carton and POP, the Landa S10P perfecting press for commercial printing and the Landa W10 web press for flexible packaging and paperboard. The meter-wide (41 in.), high-speed W10 web press prints up to 8 colors at 200 meters per minute (656 ft./min) on plastic packaging films, paper, carton board and aluminum foil.
"The W10 produces gravure quality printing on a broad range of substrates from plastic packaging films to metal foils, from paper to carton," says Landa. "Finally, there is a solution that meets the needs of the flexible packaging industry for affordable short-to-medium run lengths of highest gravure-quality packaging materials - with flexo-competitive costs and productivity."
The company will also unveil its Nano-Metallography, a zero-waste metallization technology that will halve the cost of metallized printing compared to foil transfer processes. Nano-Metallography is operable with the full spectrum of conventional printing technologies, including narrow-web flexo, offset and screen for the production of labels, sheetfed offset for folding carton and commercial printing, web-offset for publishing and wide-web flexo and gravure for flexible packaging.
“Current metallization processes are prohibitively expensive due to the high cost of foil and tremendous waste,” Landa says. “Our Nano-Metallography technology will enable metallization at less than half the cost of foil, with zero-waste – and it's microwave compatible. We expect this technology to be available to customers in 2017.”
Landa will hold theater presentations five times a day during the exhibition. Reservations can be requested in advance at www.landanano.com/drupa,or, subject to availability, may be booked at kiosks on the Landa stand (Hall 9) during the show.