Print Technologies to Watch: Nanography

Guest Post

Eileen Fritsch, Editor, Printvergence

Introduced in 2012, Nanography® is a nanotechnology-based printing process that combines the variable-data and print-on-demand capabilities of digital printing with the media versatility, speed, and quality of offset printing. This ground-breaking advancement is based on the discovery that nano-sized pigment particles in water-based inks perform differently than the pigments used in digital inkjet printers at that time.

Thanks to Landa Digital Printing, 17 packaging, publishing and commercial printing companies around the world are already using nanographic printing presses to close the profitability gap between the shorter runs typically printed on digital presses and the mass production runs on offset, flexographic, or gravure presses.

The nanographic printing process is already making waves in the folding carton market and could affect flexible packaging markets in the next few years.

Landa Digital Printing is currently shipping two models:

• The S10 sheetfed press for folding cartons and P-O-P displays
• The SP10P perfector sheetfed press for two-sided printing for magazines, catalogs, and marketing collateral

A third model, currently in development, is the W10 web press for flexible packaging on thin films and foils.

How Does Nanography Work?

Like a production inkjet press, nanographic printing uses high-speed inkjet printheads and sophisticated software to convert digitally created files into data that dictates how, when, and where each color of ink should be ejected to form the images.

But instead of ejecting wet inks directly onto paper, the printheads eject the inks onto a specially constructed “blanket” which is then dried before passing beneath high-pressure rollers that transfer the image on the blanket to paper for magazines and catalogs, paperboard for cartons, or films for flexible packaging.

Because the dry ink-transfer process eliminates the need for higher-cost treated or coated papers, companies can reduce costs by using the same size and variety of materials available for existing B1 offset or 41-inch flexographic presses. Quality remains high because the ink droplets remain sharp and uniformly dense, even on uncoated or recycled papers.

The Landa press can be installed to run four colors or seven colors. The seven-color Landa, which includes orange, green, and blue inks, can reproduce 96 percent of the Pantone colors used in brand marketing. But even the faster 4-color CMYK Landa presses can hit 30 percent more Pantone colors than CMYK offset. This saves time and money because the press operator doesn’t need to stop the presses between jobs to mix and load custom-mixed inks for different brand colors.

The ultra-thin layer of water-based Nano-inks on Landa prints make them easier to de-ink and recycle. Other benefits include reduced waste from making multiple plates for each job and lower energy and materials costs associated with pre-treatment or post-drying.

What Do Business Experts Say?

Tim Greene, research director of the hardcopy solutions group at IDC, saw the Landa S10P duplex nanographic press when it was beta tested at Mercury Print Solutions in Rochester, NY..Greene reported that the standard B1 sheet size, speed, and image quality of the Landa S10P was achieving the advantages that Mercury had expected in order to drive growth.

In an IDC LINK report, Greene noted that Landa presses offer a compelling combination of features and economics that have attracted the attention of printing companies that want to be on the cutting edge of technology.

For example, the Landa press with in-line UV coating removed steps and labor during prepress and makeready. The Landa press has also eliminated the need to print 10% extra copies of each job on their offset press to replace prints damaged during finishing or shipping. Short runs of replacement prints can quickly be run on the Landa.

Rock LaManna, CEO of the LaManna Consulting Group, commends the entrepreneurial owners who bought the first Landa presses. They have looked beyond the initial price of Landa’s ground-breaking technology and can see how lower operating operating costs and greater media versatility can provide competitive advantages for years to come.

Although buying new equipment doesn’t automatically guarantee business growth, LaManna knows from experience that “being the first on the block” to offer radically new technical capabilities is important. It attracts forward-thinking clients who want to use those unique capabilities to grow their own businesses. As the client grows, so does the packaging label or packaging business.

LaManna reminds ready-to-retire print business owners that strategic, private-equity buyers offer high multiples only to companies that are prepared for immediate growth. To attract high multiples when selling a business, the print business should offer technical capabilities and staff expertise that competitors can’t easily match.

What Do Packaging Industry Users Say?

At the end of 2021, six of the 17 installed Landa presses were in the U.S. According to Landa Sales Manager Scott Brown, global interest in the printers is high and a number of installations are either in progress or scheduled.

Companies that operate S10 or S10P Landa presses in the U.S. include: Mercury Print Solutions in Rochester, NY; Marketing Alliance Group in Dalton, GA; Duggal Visual Solutions in New York; K-1 Packaging Group, City of Industry, CA; Hudson Printing in Salt Lake City, Utah; and Virtual Packaging in Grapevine, TX.

K-1 Packaging Group provides custom packaging solutions for consumer products. K-1 uses the Landa S10 for jobs that use 5,000 sheets or less. The work includes folding cartons, countertop displays, labels, and litho-lam corrugated boxes. K-1 President Mike Tsai said a key factor in the decision to buy the press was how fast the Landa press could produce back-to-back short-to-medium-run jobs. A press run that would have required eight makereadies on a conventional press were achieved in just 70 minutes on the Landa S10.

Because the Landa press easily handles sophisticated jobs, K-1 can better serve clients who want to include variable product codes or traceability markers on their packaging.

Virtual Packaging is an all-digital company founded in 1996. They provide full-service production of packaging prototypes and folding cartons to U.S. and international brands. The company can provide everything from a single mock-up for a presentation to a few thousand prototypes for market testing.

Companies can also order annual production runs of folding cartons on a monthly subscription basis. This saves warehouse space and enables clients to tweak the designs of the packages from month to month and include advertising with coupon codes on the inside panels of the carton.

During a WhatTheyThink! webinar, Virtual Packaging Vice President Jordan Patterson said the Landa S10 press complements their existing fleet of digital printers. Over the past 2 years, the Landa has enabled them to expand their revenue streams to include sustainable packaging and corrugated boxes. They have also used the Landa to print 8,000 posters with different quantities of 127 poster designs. Making plates required to run such a job on an offset press would have been extremely costly.

One of the biggest jobs Virtual Packaging has handled on the Landa involved printing 100,000 variable-data sheets on a plastic packaging substrate. Problems with ink adhesion made it difficult to print the job with offset and/or Indigo presses. Virtual Packaging completed the job on the Landa in two days.

Today, many global brands understand the economic and environmental benefits of producing shorter runs of packaging. So if you are considering getting into the folding carton or flexible packaging business, pay attention to what’s happening with nanographic printing.