Opinion

Three firms stand out from pre-Drupa announcements

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We are now entering the pre-Drupa announcement season, when vendors tell us a little - but often not a lot - about what they will be showing in Dsseldorf come May. Three companies I feel may provide major highlights, and which will certainly rank high on the list of companies and products to look at, are covered in this article.

The first is one of the historical stars of Drupa, this time wearing another hat: Benny Landa, founder of Indigo. Since Benny sold Indigo to HP he has set up the Landa Corporation, perhaps the most interesting part of which is Landa Labs, a very specialised research facility working on nano particle technology. From this has come Landa Digital Printing, whose line up of digital nanographic printing presses will be unveiled at Drupa.

Landa Labs is said to have developed an ink made of particles which are smaller than a germ and a printhead that can use the micro-droplets to print on virtually any material. So, can we expect a new inkjet press with ultra-minute pigment particles? Furthermore, do we need smaller particles to get even better print quality? Having known Benny Landa for 20 years, I predict we will get a phenomenal presentation from him and his team at Drupa. It will be one of the show’s highlights. I will wait with keen anticipation to see what the press is and how Landa’s nano-ink will generate ‘the rise of nano-graphics.’

The second is a new entrant to the evolving B2 sheetfed digital print market. Delphax is a well-established vendor of high-speed continuous feed monochrome presses and the leading supplier of presses for the cheque printing market. At Drupa, it will launch its new Elan range of sheetfed colour inkjet presses using Memjet printheads. Delphax is saying very little about the presses, apart from the fact that they will print up to 500 A4ipm at 1,600dpi. My belief is that it will likely have a 66cm print width, using three different printheads across the sheet with one array per colour. I believe the Delphax press will be substantially lower in cost and much higher in speed than other B2 digital presses to be seen at Drupa, such as those already announced by Fujifilm and Screen.

The third company I am extremely keen to visit at Drupa is KBA, which has an agreement with the world’s largest printer, RR Donnelley, to licence and incorporate the latter’s inkjet technology in its presses. RR Donnelley has built and installed its own inkjet presses in more than 20 American plants. Neither KBA nor RR Donnelley has added any further details since their partnership was announced nearly a year ago, but it is known that KBA is already showing output samples from its press to potential customers.

Two technologies have been licenced: first, the piezo version of RR Donnelley’s ProteusJet; and second, the Apollo technology that allows variable data inkjet printing to work with traditional offset inks. I understand that the piezo ProteusJet technology will be on show with some additional facilities for using standard offset papers, but what would really excite me is to see the Apollo technology in action. I hope this will be shown. If so, and it works as outlined, it would be a show-stopping demonstration.

– Andrew Tribute, industry technology expert

Reading PrintWeek's Briefing on the pre-Drupa announcements here