Two printing giants unite

Heidelberger Druckmaschinen and Landa Corporation have announced a global partnership to develop Nanographic Printing Presses. The purpose of the joint venture is to expand mainstream printing, including short-to-medium runs, variable data and quick turnaround printing. Heidelberg says it intends to develop, manufacture, sell and service a new generation of digital printing presses based upon Landa’s nanographic printing technology.

Bernhard Schreier, CEO and Chairman of the Management Board Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AGBernhard Schreier, Heidelberg CEO and Chairman of the Management Board, said: "Heidelberg is announcing this strategic partnership to signal to the market our commitment to our customers. We are keenly aware of their need for high volume and high speed. It is those needs that led us to develop our benchmark Anicolor systems and the very successful partnership with Ricoh on dry toner-based digital presses. And it is those same needs that led us to embrace Landa Nanography for a new generation of digital presses for commercial printing. The fact is, our customers need both offset and digital. The Landa Nanographic Printing process will enable us to offer digital versatility with the strength of offset for which Heidelberg is renowned.”

Benny Landa, founder, Chairman and CEO of Landa Corporation, stated that the alliance was a major step towards industry-wide adoption of Nanography for mainstream digital printing “For the foreseeable future,” he said “offset and digital will not only co-exist, but will complement one another — offset for medium-to-longer jobs and digital for short-to-medium run lengths. Now there is a digital printing technology that has both the speed and customer economics to fill that role – and Heidelberg is certainly well-positioned to take it to market.”

Benny Landa, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Landa CorporationAt the heart of the Nanographic Printing process is Landa’s water-based NanoInkTM. Comprised of pigment particles tens of nanometres in size, these nano-pigments absorb light and enable unique image quality. The system is characterised by ultra-sharp dots of extremely high uniformity, high gloss fidelity and the broadest CMYK colour gamut.

Ink ejectors apply the ink to the printing stock at extremely high speeds creating images with remarkable abrasion and scratch resistance. Most notably, it can print on any off-the-shelf substrate, from coated and uncoated paper stocks to recycled carton; from newsprint to plastic packaging films — all without requiring any kind of pre-treatment or special coating - and no post-drying.

Landa concluded, “I take great personal pride in announcing this global partnership between our two companies. Heidelberg’s reputation for quality and technological innovation is legendary, as is their extraordinary level of customer loyalty. Their technological and market strengths, as well as their focus on excellence, are a great fit with Landa and we are very excited about this important alliance.”