Benny Landa has received patents for digital printing of drinks cans and other cylindrical objects using nanography.
It is the first extension of the nanographic process beyond conventional graphic arts and packaging printing and comes with the first W10, the Landa press designed for flexible packaging print, to be delivered in coming weeks.
However, Landa Digital Printing has not yet built a machine based around the can printing patents. In an exclusive interview for the latest issue of Print Business, Landa explains that 400 billion cans are produced every year, with almost all decorated with dry litho styles of printing. These limit what can be printed as colours cannot be overlaid on each other. The nanographic process does not have this limitation.
The US patent states: “Since the market is demanding ever short(er) run lengths, even [for] the customised and personalised packaging, the need to change printing plates and to re-adjust the press for every decoration change is becoming an increasingly important economic burden and is a barrier to fulfilling market requirements.”
The opportunity is delivery of printed cans that tie in with special events, sporting finals, weddings, product launch and so on. There are hundreds of artisan brewers and bars that want bespoke branded ales that only they can sell. All these are ripe for the digital transformation.
“There are 400 billion beverage cans produced a year,” says Landa, “and little more than 1,000 metal decorators able to print them.”
The appeal is to be able to produce short promotional production runs, perhaps tied in to sporting occasions or for family events.
“The appeal of mass customisation was tremendous and it sent a message through the entire marketing world affecting everything, not just food and drink. It has changed Nike sports shoes, clothing, consumer electronics: everyone understands that customisation strikes a chord with consumers.
“It can be producing crisps for a football game with both teams on it and if there’s a beer can customised for the game, consumers may buy two, one for drinking and the other to take home as a momento.”
The patent describes how the nanographic printing process can be used effectively for cans. The image is printed to the transfer belt by inkjet and dried before being applied to the can mounted on a mandrel or as the can is rotated against the belt in a continuous system.
Implementation is some years away, however its potential has been demonstrated in Landa’s labs in Israel. The task will be to build a prototype to show how the technology might fit in to a can filling line. The company will not be licensing the technology but will build machines itself.
Can printing is not, however, a completely new segment for Landa himself. At Drupa 95 Indigo demonstrated that using the transfer belt concept it could print on aluminium cans, pressurised to present the best possible surface for decoration. Some of those cans, containing fizzy pop, have been kept as souvenirs by visitors to the show. “We have been in this mindset for a long time,” he says. “It opens entire realms of conversations.
“For the company this is an attractive market where the potential for the ink alone is into billions of dollars. No other technology can come close to the quality requirements, the robustness and the economics. And that’s the reason for this development.”
