In my last technical analysis of the Landa press, I mentioned that the company had gone to the Central District Court in Tel Aviv to seek bankruptcy protection. Facing about $500 million in debt, they hoped to prevent total failure by getting the court to rule in their favor, giving the company time to find new capital.
The judge in that matter, Hana Kitsis, made her ruling stating that it was smarter to allow the company to continue to operate under supervised protection than to force it into insolvency. This seem especially smart in my opinion because Landa’s salable assets in Israel are only $127 million. That, against its debt, doesn’t resolve the greater problem.
By granting a short – one week – extension to the company, she gave them the time needed to find an investor, Israel’s FIMI Opportunity Funds, who rescued the company at the eleventh hour. This has not been a completely clean transaction, with FIMI arguing that some of the terms of its purchase were established without their consent. Regardless, the company has agreed to continue to pay the court-appointed financial supervisors while the transaction is completed and the disputes are settled.
The speed of the entire transaction is surprising to me, as similar situations in the graphic arts industry in the U.S. have taken years to resolve. This one was opened and closed in a matter of months.
Landa’s workforce – about 500 people in the Spring – has been reduced by layoffs to about 350, this also allowed by the court-appointed supervisors.
The company has also suffered a number of uninvited crises not of their making. The Israeli war with Hamas, and Israel’s continued hostilities in Lebanon and Iran, have contributed tremendously to the troubles at Landa. About one quarter of Landa’s workforce are reservists in the Israeli military, and those workers have been in uniform since the Hamas invasion in October, 2023.
Compounding this worker shortage is the fact that Tel Aviv is a common target in that conflict. On May 4 of this year, a missile fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen, avoided Israeli air defenses and hit targets in the neighborhood of the Ben Gurion Airport, including the Landa facility. Though there were no fatalities, this was another setback to the imaging company.
Additional pressure on supplies coming through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea (also perpetrated by Houthi warriors) have adversely affected Landa. The printing press components in the Landa presses come from Komori in Japan, and those shipments have been slowed by the ongoing hostilities in the region.
Those delays, the ongoing war with Hamas and others, workers in conflict, incoming missile attacks, general chaos in Israel as a result of the war, and international uneasiness about doing business with any company on the edge of military conflict have added to Landa’s endemic troubles.
The press, which has extraordinary capabilities, took many years and many millions of dollars more than predicted by Landa. Originally announced in 2012, the machine struggled to meet expectations, and was written-off by many pundits and even some supporters.
Benny Landa, the founder and brain-trust of Landa, is famous for being an eternal optimist, and is among the industry’s most talented and successful inventors. He is also guilty of more than an occasional technology or sales prediction. He was wrong by many years. But he was right about the primary qualities of the machine. On that he was absolutely right.
The Landa press took longer than what was promised, or expected, to be delivered. Today, according to industry publications, there are 51 machines in 14 countries. At about $4 million each, complete, they are competitive in the marketplace. But apparently the company does not break-even on any press sale. Instead, they rely on ongoing support and consumable sales to be profitable in the long run. To me that makes little sense. Landa has not published the cost of manufacture, so we don’t really know how much is lost on every sale.
This business philosophy, combined with other fickle market conditions, does not bode well for those daring enough to purchase one of these machines. If Landa were to become insolvent or be forced to liquidate (both unlikely at the moment) where would its customers get ink, and the famous imaging belt?
How would any company with a Landa press survive the company’s failure?
Certainly after-market suppliers could step in to provide ink, and given time, even the belt. But it would cause severe disruptions in those operations that have invested in the Landa presses.
What will probably happen
My estimation of the situation is that the FIMI organization will help Landa to succeed. Their track record is extraordinary, and this is not the first company-in-distress they have absorbed. FIMI has already announced that they will provide ample cash to Landa to allow it to continue to make presses and to support its existing customers. Then FIMI will fund an effort to grow Landa into a larger and more successful company. The fact that the machine now works beautifully means that it has overcome the most significant hurdle to success.
When I look at the field of digital ink-jet printing machines I see a market with several impressive competitors, each producing one or more good offerings to the graphic arts industry. Most are devices that feed a small niche market.
Kodak makes the Prosper series of presses. These machines produce stunning quality printing at very high speeds. The machines have been most successful in business document printing, specifically bank statements, credit card statements, and collateral printing. They are much narrower, dramatically faster than the Landa, and more limited in the ability to print on various substrates. Prospers are web-fed.
Hewlett-Packard has its line of extraordinary web-fed PageWide ink-jet presses. These are very impressive machines, capable of printing on uncoated substrates. The company offers them in 40-inch width up to over 100-inch. These are used for book printing, business document printing, ballot printing, and many other purposes. Probably the most important area of use is producing the faces for laminated packaging with corrugated liner added or other packaging substrates. Amazing speed, excellent quality, and the ability to scale for specific needs are the cornerstones of the PageWide presses.
The company attempted to woo the newspaper industry ten years ago, but it proved unworkable, as the cost of operation is just too high to be competitive with traditional newspaper presses using offset printing with regular ink.
Fuji makes a series of 74 cm. and 100 cm. ink-jet presses. Some of sheet-fed while one is web-fed. I don’t know as much about these as I should. I have seen output, and it looks good. I spoke with a sales person at Print United, and learned that the substrate selection is limited.
Komori, the company that makes the large components of the Landa press, makes a machine that is called Impremia. Looking at the company’s web site, it looks suspiciously like a Landa press. Coincidence? The company calls the machine a “nanoprint” press, using one of the terms coined by Landa: Nanoprinting. Snooping around the web today I have learned that Komori has installed one in Japan, one in China, one in Germany, one in Canada and one in Kansas City at Boelte-Hall Printers there.
So, let’s assume that the Komori press is indeed a “Landa” machine, built with cross-licensed technologies from both companies. That boosts the importance of the Landa restructuring to an even higher plateau.
I’m sure there are other offerings that I have not mentioned.
The printing industry cannot afford to have Landa fail. It’s simply too important to our industry that this innovative company continue to operate and prosper (apologies to Kodak).
I believe that the Landa press technology is the most important printing technology in the industry. In the coming years we will see increased competition and improvements to the existing technology. All of this is good for the industry. I am pleased that the Israeli court gave Landa enough breathing room to survive this unfortunate situation.
