The Offset Printers Association (OPA) recently took a 40 minute drive from Tel Aviv, Israel to visit Landa Digital Printing in Rehovot for the ‘Darshan’ of Benny Landa – the father of Digital Printing. In the history of OPA, the date on 13th February 2019 has been marked in golden words now.
Benny Landa, born on 2 June 1946, is an Israeli entrepreneur and inventor. He founded Indigo Digital Press in 1977 and The Landa Group in 2003. He is the path maker who stunned the world, especially the ‘People-in-Print’ at IPEX in 1993, when he unveiled the E-Print 1000 – the world’s first digital colour printing press. Benny Land revolutionised the printing industry once again by introducing yet another technology – Nanography in the year 2003 that brings digital printing to mainstream production.
After selling the Indigo Digital Printing to Hewlett-Packard in the year 2002 for US$ 830 million, Landa established The Landa Group for nanotechnology research. Working with nanoparticles, Landa and his team sought to capture environmental heat from the surrounding air and convert it into electricity. Landa’s research group observed that many materials exhibit unusual properties at the nano-level. They used that discovery to experiment with pigment colorants for print production. Landa created Landa Digital Printing to further commercialize the nanotechnology solution for printing. The group developed a printing ink using the Nano pigments, called Landa Nano Ink and an offset digital printing process called Nanography.
While appreciating the visit of OPA delegation to his office and factory, Mr. Benny Landa highlighted the activities being conducted in the factory and arranged the visit of factory and laboratory for the OPA delegation. Later printed samples from the latest machine were also given to all the delegates.
Mr. Ashwani Gupta, Treasurer of AIFMP and member of the delegation said, “It was a mesmerising trip, meeting the Father of Digital Printing and visiting his factory was truly an ‘eye opener’ for us. I am really thankful to Prof. Kamal Chopra for arranging such a visit, we had an excellent interaction with Benny Landa”.
