Altana, which develops speciality chemicals for surface protection and refinement, has invested $135 million, or around €100m, in Landa Digital Printing in the form of an equity financing agreement, giving it a minority stake in the company. This does not include other units of the Landa Group,such as Landa Labs and Landa Ventures.
According to Landa, The proceeds will be used for completing the development of Nanography, Landa’s water-based digital printing process, including engineering and production ramp-up of Landa Nanographic Printing™ Presses and building of manufacturing plants for Landa NanoInk™ colorants.
My guess, and it is no more than a guess, would be that this relates to the heated transfer belt that is key to the Nanography process. Essentially, the ink is dropped onto the belt, which then evaporates the water away, before transferring the ink to the media. It’s tricky because the belt has to be sticky enough to hold the ink, but not enough to prevent the ink from bonding with the substrate. Naturally, all the ink has to be passed to the media, as any residual ink will affect the next image, which you might get away with in a run of similar images, but not if you expect every image to be different, as is often the case with digital printing.
The Altana Group has four divisions: BYK Additives & Instruments, Eckart Effect Pigments, Elantas Electrical Insulation, and Actega Coatings & Sealants. Though based in Wesel, Germany, about 85 percent of its sales come through international activities, with some 46 production facilities and more than 50 service and research laboratories worldwide.
Leave a Reply