Landa digital printing market and technology update, and offset printing and digital printing cost discussion!

Source: Global printing and packaging industry

Landa has machines installed in North America, Europe, Asia and Mexico for commercial printing, publishing, packaging, direct mail and POP markets. Currently, Landa has more than 500 employees worldwide. The company's growth is partly driven by the coronavirus pandemic, which is driving growth in e-commerce. According to McKinsey, the 21% growth in online shopping is changing the way people buy, driving demand for a variety of packaging designs to serve different people and segments of the market.

Current challenges in the supply chain also highlight the importance of agility, which is good for digitization, says Sales manager Scott Brown. "People are running out of packaging, marketing materials and direct mail. Maybe they usually print 100,000 or more of a particular product, but paper is in short supply now. So they are keeping the supply chain running in shorter volumes."

Supply chain uncertainty and the need to adapt quickly have led to the emergence of the term "anti-fragility", the resilience and flexibility to adapt quickly and profitably to change. From a capital investment perspective, this means choosing equipment that allows printers to bridge gaps, take advantage of market opportunities and respond quickly to changes when they occur.

To this end, Brown points to Lanta's technology, which offers the benefits of digital production for small volumes and personalization, while enabling printers to benefit from the flexibility inherent in their existing technology, including extensive inventory, no preprocessing, and the ability to use traditional offset coating systems. This frees printers from many of the limitations of traditional digital printing and gives them greater flexibility in a market plagued by supply chain problems.

Brown also discusses the unique ink transfer process that Landa Technologies offers to achieve incredible image sharpness. "Even on recycled paper and kraft paper, the way we transfer ink produces incredibly sharp points," he says. (See below). He also points out that printing presses can achieve 96 percent PMS color.

Zwang, a digital printing expert, points out that this clarity comes from the evaporation of water before the ink touches the medium. "For most digital printing technologies, such as inkjet or UV, drying is an afterthought. By then, the water has begun to absorb into the paper. In this case, the paper has evaporated before printing, which is why you can get [this level of clarity]. This process is also why Landa can accept traditional offset sheets without pre-processing or post-processing."

With today's very fast offset preparation, faster plate replacement and faster cleaning, offset presses have been able to reduce the cost intersection to the level of digital printing, just as digital faster speed and higher quality allow it to cross. "But while the two technologies are converging, what seems to be missing is the ability to have the core piece of paper size that most printing companies use -- B1 40 inches. Paper size, and the ability to run any paper without pre-processing and be able to do it the same way. These were some of the key issues we wanted to address during the development of the Press at Landa, "brown said.

To help attendees understand the intersections, Brown provided a chart showing them by the speed of the printing press, the length of the job, and the impact on the number of hours it took to complete the job. On average, the amount of crossover between a Landa press and offset is between 4,000-5,000 sheets, but this varies with the addition of spot colours, as Landa can achieve 96% spot colours without changing plates or cleaning them.

What has happened in practice is that What Landa has seen is that these presses run longer for reasons that are not strictly based on the cost of printing preparation. "There may be other reasons, such as spot color effects, post-press operations and the ability to reduce post-press time, or the ability to demonstrate version control based on eliminating plate changes and cleaning that they were previously unable to do."

Workflow advantages also come into play when it comes to replacing offset printing with digital technology, Zwang noted. "Crossover was a good starting point, but printers quickly realised the value of using digital technology to optimise production workflows and profitability in the rest of the plant, whether for pre-finishing on the press or just to better manage their production schedules, digitisation started to make sense. It's a bigger impact on productivity."

This includes the economic benefits of moving operations from offset to digital presses so that offset presses can operate most efficiently. This is not necessarily a one-to-one replacement issue, but rather a workflow management issue. Brown points to one of Landa's customers, whose printer now handled the previous two offset presses. "The interesting part is that jobs that are now using offset presses are more profitable because they are very good for those long print orders, while jobs on Lanta presses are more profitable because they are very good for those short print orders."

At the end of the webinar's technology segment, Brown discussed the recyclability advantages of Landa's water-based ink. "We have carried out tests and the results have been amazing, especially compared to some processes that involve more curing UV and other processes. As a further environmental benefit, all of our inks are water-based, so our customers can save on cleaning and treatment costs."