Speaking at the EFI Connect conference currently underway in Las Vegas the entrepreneur inventor Benny Landa says some 430 print business have now signed letters of intent (LOI) for his nanopresses, many of them with the requisite $10,000 deposit.
Landa says the first nano presses will be in beta testing at the end of this year, with Europe and the US the likely locations for the presses, one of which will be a commercial press and the other the packaging / carton version.
The press in question will be the S10 B1 sheetfed printer, which Landa says will produce prints at 1200dpi – at drupa it was outputting 600dpi images - and both of will come with their own service engineers for the duration of the test stage.
Landa says his own company will be first to market with the nano press technology, with press partners Heidelberg, manroland and Komori to follow, and he fully expects all seven versions of the press that were on show at drupa to be released.
Speaking at the Connect conference Landa re-iterated his reasons for skipping Ipex and China Print, saying that his company knows all its likely prospects, and has enough work to do in meeting its order requirements.
On the company itself Landa confirmed that it will remain a private business, and said he has been to London to raise some $200m to further fund the nano press project. In 2002 Landa sold his initial Indigo business to HP for close to $800m.
Landa also told delegates that his company is not limited to the print industry saying that his R&D company, Landa Labs, is working in multiple fields related to nanotechnology. These include developing solutions for thermal heat electricity conversion, drug delivery in the body, and bizzarely hair coloring products.
Andrew Tribute
