Features Printing
Landa woos customers with focus on ‘Run More’ at pre-Drupa event

The world of printing is getting ready for the industry’s biggest trade show, Drupa, which will be held May 28-June 7 at Düsseldorf, Germany. Many printing solutions providers are conducting pre-Drupa meet and greets across the world. I was invited by Landa Digital Printing for such an event held earlier this month in New York City.

The daylong conference offered a snapshot of Landa’s business priorities, which were neatly encapsulated by the event theme of ‘Run More’.

CEO Gil Oron opened the event with a short summary of Landa’s business performance to date: the company has doubled its business YoY in the last three years. They’re also building an ink plant in the U.S. to “be close to their customers.”

The company now has three investors. Besides the company’s founder Benny Landa and German entrepreneur Susanne Klatten, the Rausing family of Tetra Pak fame has invested in Landa.

“They’re enabling us to continue our development and growth as well as adding new capabilities,” said Oron.

The additional investment from the Rausing family has supercharged the company. They’re focused on offering “more presses, more business, and more technology” to clients.

Sharon Cohen.

Company overview

The company has 300 nanography-related patents. It sold more than 50 presses worldwide. Over 20 of them have been installed in the U.S. In Canada, Mitchell Press, Burnaby, B.C., owns a Landa press. The company has 600 employees with operations in North America, Europe, and China.

They currently have two products – Landa S10 for folding carton applications and Landa S10P for commercial, publishing and POP/POS applications. The Landa presses can be used in publishing, direct mail, folding cartons, calendar printing etc.

The S10 prints at a speed of 6,500 SPH on substrates that are 1.6 to 32 pt. (40-800 μm) thick. The S10P can print 6,500 SPH (single-sided) and 3,250 SPH (double-sided). Both presses can match 90 per cent of Pantone colours and are in B1 (41 in.) format. There’s no need for make-readies or plates with the Landa presses due to a unique, proprietary technology.

Technology

After selling the Indigo inkjet press technology to HP, its founder Benny Landa became interested in nanomaterials research. His research eventually led to the development of water-based nano-inks, which as the name suggests are nano-sized droplets of ink particles.

In a Landa press, billions of these ink particles are ejected onto a heated image conveyor blanket. The droplets blend to form the desired colour. When all the water has evaporated, you’re left with an ink image in the shape of an ultra-thin (500 nanometres) dry polymeric film. The film bonds with the substrate immediately upon transfer, leaving no residual ink on the blanket. These nano-ink images can be transferred onto diverse substrates including coated or uncoated paper or plastic. Since the images are dry, the printed sheets can be coated inline with UV or water-based coatings and then processed in finishing equipment right out of the press.

The Landa presses are designed for short as well as long runs.

Customer response

Landa’s customer-centric focus was the underlying theme of the whole event. Landa’s COO Sharon Cohen stressed on how “Landa always saw the world from its customer’s perspectives,” so that they could run more jobs, business, products, substrates etc. “Over 20 per cent of consumers have decided to buy a second press. This is the strongest validation for us.”

A panel discussion with Landa consumers was enriching. On the panel were Cheryl Kahanec, CEO, Quantum Group; Tara Duckett, sales manager, Southern Champion Tray; Paul Hudson, owner-CEO, Hudson Printing; and Bob Neff, president and CEO, Neff Packaging. The key takeaways from that discussion were Landa’s commitment to service. All the panelists had access to a Landa field engineer onsite to troubleshoot any issues that may arise.

Quantum had bought their first Landa press in December 2022, and is now buying another one. Southern Champion Tray, a folding carton manufacturer, also invested in a Landa press in December 2022. Hudson Printing purchased their first Landa in 2021. They currently have two Landa presses.

“Long runs and variable printing were taking too long on our other presses. We have web presses where the runs were too short. We thought it’ll be more efficient and cost-effective to run them on a Landa,” explained Hudson.

According to Duckett, Southern Champion Tray didn’t have much flexibility in moving jobs between digital and offset. They do short runs of food packaging with multiple SKUs, which was inefficient on offset. Duckett said that the Landa has given them the flexibility of doing business with emerging CPG brands who only need short runs. Heavy SKU jobs with 80,000 sheets that were killing throughput in offset have now moved to the Landa at Southern Champion.

For Quantum, Landa gave them the opportunity to combine jobs. Neff Packaging primarily serves the pharmaceutical market. The Landa has made their operations faster, but not necessarily cheaper. They’ve managed to pick up more than 10 new clients in food and software industries.

Hudson Printing found new product opportunities in variable printing. Landa broke down the barrier between offset and digital for them.

“Everybody is about serving the customers and doing the job right. Landa has some unique abilities like dry transfer, nano-ink, B1 size, etc.,” added Hudson.

When it came to integrating the Landa press into existing workflows, all the panelists adopted unique approaches. Neff intentionally housed the Landa in a separate room to test out the new technology and smooth out any bumps that may arise. They also hired a fresh team to work on the Landa. The Lanada was their first foray into digital printing. It has been so successful that they’re buying another Landa press.

At Southern Champion Tray, a previous digital experience had made employees slightly cynical about hybrid presses. “It took a bit of convincing, but now people love it,” said Duckett.

At Quantum, a fire at the plant around the time the Landa press was being installed changed everything.

“It removed sales resistance and employee resistance. The wall between digital and offset has gone. We’re getting opportunities we didn’t anticipate. We’re also moving things from offset,” said Kahanec.

Having prior digital experience was helpful for Quantum, Hudson, and Southern Champion Tray because the workflows are different. However, for Neff, prior mechanical experience was sufficient to man the Landa.

All in all the panelists were very pleased with the presses and the services being offered by Landa.

Market trends

At the conference, Dr. Sean Smyth, Smithers analyst and consultant, offered a keynote presentation on the future of digital printing. He said companies are changing the way print is manufactured by integrating digital technologies into the process. Some of the mega trends he highlighted were:

• sustainability;
• economic development;
• demographic shift;
• changes to the retail sector;
• regulatory changes (g. front of packaging rules for Canadian CPGs);
• staffing issues;
• rise of technologies like automation and artificial intelligence; and
• drive towards low run lengths.

PSPs must provide more designs and personalization to engage consumers, he recommended.

Dr. Smyth mentioned inkjet is replacing a lot of traditional analog materials and that there’s a move from serial to parallel printing as well as the development of automated finishing systems. This can be attributed to performance of machines in the market (think high speeds, automated make-readies). Print on demand is also reducing inventory and waste. He highlighted that in direct mail, full coloured variable printing is driving higher response.

Looking ahead

At Drupa, Landa will have fourth largest booth. At the 32,000-sf booth, expect to hear more about Landa’s new offerings, especially on how the company is using artificial intelligence and perhaps a new model with higher speed – they hinted at 11,000 SPH at the conference.