Landa engages EFI for nano front end

Another part of Benny Landa’s nano jigsaw puzzle appears to have fitted into place with the creation of a partnership agreement between EFI and Landa Corporation for the development of a digital front end as part of Landa’s long awaited end-to-end nanographic printing solution.

Guy Gecht, chief executive at EFI (pictured above, left), and Landa chairman and chief executive Benny Landa (right) announced the partnership to an audience of over 1,000 EFI customers during the opening session of EFI’s annual users conference in Las Vegas.

Gecht says, “Benny Landa is a legend in our industry, and we are excited to work with his company as its exclusive DFE technology provider. Landa nanographic printing presses have potential to accelerate the migration of mainstream commercial printing and packaging to digital printing. The Landa DFE provides a proven, ultra-high-speed and well-integrated front-end platform that Landa customers will require.”

Benny Landa says, “Our nanographic printing process enables us to offer offset-quality digital printing and a combination of format size and throughput speeds unprecedented in the graphic arts industry. Reaching this remarkable and exciting goal requires partnering with best-in-class providers. That is the reason we chose Fiery technology and EFI as our development partner – to deliver the highest quality ultra-high-speed front-end platform to match the quality and performance of our Nanographic Printing presses.”

Landa says the digital front end will employ EFI-developed Fiery technology, and will offer new functionality for sheetfed and webfed Landa nanographic printing presses in the commercial, folding carton, point-of-sale, publishing, and flexible packaging markets.

The Landa digital front end will stream jobs at full printing speed for four-eight colour printing with Landa Nanographic Printing presses and will enable press operators to perform last-minute job changes on the press, to proof jobs and to print rush jobs on-the-fly. The company adds that the front end will collect production feedback from the presses and support closed-loop colour control and inspection, supporting all job dynamics including static, variable data printing and every page is different printing.

The agreement brings together two pioneering businesses in the digital printing industry. They say they have a vision to fundamentally change how mainstream applications are produced by offering a breakthrough for cost-effectively printing short-to-medium job lengths up to five times faster than existing digital printing presses.

Landa says its presses create demanding technical challenges for processing job data, with stringent colour management, job workflow and integrated MIS demands. It selected EFI because of its technology leadership and expertise in high-speed digital systems and colour and print management. Landa believes its customers can use the new digital front end to create an end-to-end solution that fits into their printing operation, whether full offset, all-digital or hybrid offset/digital.

Landa adds that clients will install its nanographic printing presses next to offset presses and use the same substrates. It adds that, with the new digital front end, Landa nanographic printing presses will integrate into a printer’s existing prepress, production, and business management workflow and finishing equipment. The company claims it will also ensure consistency, accuracy and compliance to leading colour standards and will enable high-speed, variable-data printing on any off-the-shelf B1 format 1,050mm substrate.

EFI says the new digital front end will integrate with EFI’s MIS/ERP systems, as well as with third-party prepress and workflow platforms.

The companies expect to begin beta testing as part of the beta installations of the B1 format Landa S10 nanographic printing press slated for Q4 of this year.

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