This year’s ‘Olympiad’ of the printing world was a clear sign of a digital takeover and the spread of packaging across the halls marked progress towards industrializing technologies that in 2012 were in niche applications or at the concept stage. Likely industry changers for packaging sprang from expected sources, others from lesserknown names, but one idea worth backing as a winner at drupa 2016 was the brainchild of a new player in the emerging sector of virtual 3D packaging design.
A light show, music, film, dancers, drummers… Benny Landa threw everything into making his Nanographic technology ‘baby’ the talk of drupa 2016 and thousands poured into the hall to see an S10 spit out paper sheets printed in glorious technicolor. Several times a day, a packed theatre saw the inveterate showman in person drive home his message that digital printers need not choose between high speed and high quality because a Landa offers both at a market-low price; that without exception the S10 is “cost competitive with every printing press in the world,” achieves offset quality on any paper at BI speeds of up to13,000 sph, 8-color, giving “the widest color gamut in the world.”
But all the theatrics in the world cannot persuade a printer then and there to part with a mountain of cash, which suggests deals Landa completed at the show, reportedly worth €450 million in total, involved longstanding converts: companies such as German folding carton printer Colordruck Baiersbronn, the first S10 customer and beta site in Europe; ZRP, of China, a first user in Asia Pacific; and Grupo Gondi, of Mexico, who leads Landa’s digital march into Latin America.
In the UK, flexible packaging printer Reflex Labels is a paid-up customer waiting for its 656 feet a minute (200 metres a minute) Landa W10 Nanographic press to roll off the line in Israel, four years after buying into the concept at drupa 2012. Since then Reflex director Will Parker has travelled often between Reflex, in Mansfield, and Tel Aviv to be involved in the final development stages of a press he considers “unique and far ahead.”
“The price per metre/per tonne is competitive and disturbing to the market,” says the third-generation printer and a drupa visitor since age five. Whatever the price, which Parker does not disclose, he thinks the W10 “a good investment” for a family business with a turnover of nearly £100 million (approximately Rs. 1,000 crore), 14 sites and 128 staff. The Landa allows the customer not to be inconvenienced by stock holding and waste, and “will create value and opportunities in packaging that labels has become used to,” he says, and potential customers have expressed their interest since 2012 including last month “one of the largest companies in the world.”
The plan is to build a focussed business unit around the Landa and make it the centre of a “visitor experience.” The location for this global reference site for Landa is undecided but will require a high rainfall because Reflex has committed to using rainwater harvested and filtered for the Nanographic waterbased inks.
