Landa chief executive Yishai Amir says the company is looking at installing half a dozen of its Nano presses in Australia within the next three years, two of them for carton printing and two for flexible package printing.
Speaking at an open house event at the firm’s first European beta installation of its S10 carton press – at German folding carton printer Edelmann – Amir showed the company’s expected install base in three years. While Europe, Japan, Korea and North America dominated the projection, Australia also featured, with two S10 sheetfed carton presses, two S10P perfecting sheetfed presses, and two W10 flexible packaging presses in the company’s vision for down under.
The gestation for the Landa nano press technology has been slower than expected. First launched at drupa 2012, CEO Benny Landa promised digital printing at offset quality, at offset speeds, on offset stocks. Some 400 printers including several from Australia stumped up $10,000 each for a place in the queue. By drupa 2016, the company was talking about putting its presses into beta sites, which has been happening for the S series sheetfed presses for the past 18 months.
By next year’s drupa, the company will also have its W series flexible packaging press in beta testing, with a European flexible packaging specialist slated to be the first customer for the 1m-wide, 100m/min print system.
Landa currently has four beta presses in operation: three of the S10 carton presses and one S10P commercial press, with another four soon to go in. At the event, Amir said more ‘will be announced soon’, and that Landa is currently opening System Plant 3 in Israel, with System Plant 4 on the drawing board. He said the company is planning on installing one machine a month for the rest of the year.
Digital carton and flexible packaging printing will be one of the themes of drupa next year. Already major players including EFI, HP, and Heidelberg have systems in the field, with at least another half dozen expected to be launched at the show.
Edelman was singing the praises of the Landa S10 carton press at the open house. The company says it has successfully trialled the press on multiple stocks, including litho pre-print UV and conventional, hot foil, cold foil, lamination, cutting and gluing, and metallised board. Its S10 has been upgraded to the seven-colour version. It says spot colours are emulated in the DFE.
The company installed its 6,500sph S10 15 months ago. The new seven-colour configuration of the B1 press allows it to match more than 95 per cent of Pantone colours. The press is fitted with the AQM closed-loop colour control system.
Edelmann operates from 21 sites across the globe with three core product areas: healthcare, beauty care, and consumer brands. Sales revenue is in excess of €300m.
