Digital printing pioneer Benny Landa lit up a grey drupa afternoon with the revelation that he has a new company that will manufacture sheet fed and web fed digital presses capable of running at offset speeds using nano printing technology.

Offset manufacturers have wasted no time in embracing the nano concept, with Heidelberg, manroland and Komori signing up as partners, all of them hoping to integrate Landa’s nano technology onto their presses. However for all them it is a concept, with as Heidelberg CEO Bernhard Schreier says, “potential to explore.”

Landa says his own nano digital offset presses will not be available before then end of next year, “at the earliest.” Aiming at the 98 per cent of commercial printing that has not yet been impacted by inkjet or toner digital printing, Landa says digital prints a trillion pages a year but offset prints 50 trillion pages. Nano presses are particularly designed for the 1000-10,000 run market, and of course have no plates, no makeready, no need for proofing, and can accommodate variable data.

He has five nano presses on his stand, and says among other things that, “If you can operate a smartphone you can operate a nano press.” He says, “Nanography is a new technology for applying ink to paper. In developing Landa Nanographic Printing we had to re-think and reinvent the printing press. The result is digital printing with remarkable performance – from a family of presses that share stunning ergonomic design, a small footprint and some of the most advanced user functionality available in the market.”

The nano in question refers to the ink particle size. The technology works by ejecting the nano sized ink particles onto a heated blanket, where the carrier water evaporates and the ink effectively becomes a laminate film. It is then transferred to the paper stock, which is any offset stock, coated or uncoated, and virtually any plastic. Drying is instantaneous.

The control panel for the presses takes the intuitive graphic approach of a smartphone with drag and drop, expand and touchscreen, and is on a three metre wide by one metre deep panel on the side of the press. Landa says there are no insurmountable issues with recycling, which continues to dog some other digital presses. Inks will be manufactured and supplied by Landa for his own presses and any developed by partners.

He promised pricing for the nano presses would mean printers could produce print at lower cost per page than currently achievable with offset presses. The delay in bringing nano presses to market is partly through consistency and quality issues, which Landa said would be resolved within his labs, rather than in the field as happened with the Indigo presses, which he admitted he brought to market too early.

Landa adds, “Landa Nanographic Printing Presses are intended not to replace offset printing, but to complement it. For the foreseeable future, offset printing will continue to be the preferred method for producing run lengths of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. But the market is demanding shorter and shorter run lengths – and that’s where Nanography comes in – to enable print service providers to produce those short to medium run lengths economically – at offset speeds. That’s what we mean when we say that Landa Nanographic Printing brings digital to the mainstream.”

He adds, “The digital communications revolution does not signal the end of print, otherwise I would not be investing in nano printing. Eventually print may disappear, but certainly not within the lifetime of current printers.”

Each of the three sheet fed presses can print in up to eight colours and can use spot and specialty colours for a range of applications including general commercial printing, marketing collaterals, medium-run books and manuals, direct mail and short-run folding cartons:

The Landa S5 Nanographic Printing Press – a B3 entry-level press designed for fast and easy transition to digital production that can print single-sided at speeds of up to 11,000 SPH on any off-the-shelf media (60-350 gsm)

The Landa S7 Nanographic Printing Press – which he calls the most productive B2 digital production press on the market, capable of single-sided or double-sided printing at speeds of up to 12,000 SPH on any off-the-shelf media (60-350 gsm)

The Landa S10 Nanographic Printing Press – the market’s first B1 digital production press, able to print single-sided or double-sided at up to 13,000 SPH on any off-the-shelf stock (60-400 gsm). A straight printing (simplex) model for folding carton operates at up to 6,500 SPH on virgin and recycled carton board, metalized stock ( micron thickness) and plastics foils.

Aimed at commercial printing, publishing, labels, and flexible packaging, the three web presses can print in up to eight colours:

The Landa W5 Nanographic Printing Press – a 560 mm web width press capable of single-sided printing at up to 200 m/min on plastic films and shrink sleeves (12 to 250 microns) and on label stocks, tube stocks, aluminium foil and paper (50 to 300 microns)

The Landa W10 Nanographic Printing Press – a 1020 mm web width press, capable of single-sided printing at up to 200 m/min on film stock (12-250 microns) and on paper (50-300 microns). Landa says it will make its NanoInk FDA-compliant for food packaging, which should interest mainstream packaging converters.

The Landa W50 Nanographic Printing Press – a 560 mm web width press for high-volume digital production, capable of double-sided printing at up to 200 m/min on any coated or uncoated paper (40-300 gsm). Suited for publishing, books, magazines, periodicals, annual reports, journals, directories, manuals, direct mail with personalisation and versioning

Meanwhile, press giants Komori and manroland have signed global partnerships with Landa to manufacture and distribute the nanographic technology.

Yoshiharu Komori, Komori president, chairman and chief executive officer, says, “As a specialist manufacturer of printing presses for many years, Komori Corporation provides printing systems that are capable of producing a wide range of printed goods for the commercial, packaging and currency printing markets. We see growing demand for variable data printing and personalisation, especially for niche applications, which we are addressing with our already-announced digital on demand solutions. However, there is also ever-growing customer demand for shorter and shorter run lengths as well as very short turnaround times.

"To meet these commercial printing market needs, we have embraced Landa Nanographic Printing as a powerful solution for our next generation sheet fed and web fed digital systems that use water-based inks. Moreover, this decision accords with Komori’s new policy of operating as a print engineering service provider to meet various future-oriented demands from customers.”

Commenting on the manroland arrangement, Raphael Penuela, executive vice president and main board member for manroland sheetfed says, “manroland sheetfed is committed to helping our customers meet the challenges of today's printing industry with the most innovative and productive solutions. Clearly, that must include digital for mainstream printing.

“Landa Nanographic Printing technology offers the versatility of digital printing together with the qualities and speed of offset printing. It's a great strategic fit. Our goal will be to deliver to our customers new digital printing solutions by converting their existing offset presses to Nanography."

Benny Landa adds, “As the newly restructured manroland sheetfed starts a new chapter, I am enthused that the company will adopt Landa Nanography on which to base its digital printing offerings.

“Nanography and offset are a perfect fit. In the foreseeable future we will not see a digital printing technology capable of replacing offset for job run lengths of tens or hundreds of thousands. But the market demands ever-shorter run lengths as well as the versatility of digital. That's where Landa Nanographic Printing comes in - at unmatched cost per page.”