OPA delegates visit Benny Landa at Rehovot, Israel

Born 2 June 1946, Benny Landa 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. 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 2002 for USD 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 commercialise 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.

The OPA delegation, led by Kamal Chopra, general secretary, OPA and chairman PAMEX, felicitated Landa. While highlighting the printing industry of India and activities of AIFMP, Chopra also sought Landa’s blessings for the 250,000 printers of India and invited him to visit PAMEX during January 2020 at Mumbai.

While appreciating the visit of OPA delegation to his office and factory, 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.

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.”