Landa Running out of Time and Cash

Benny Landa is one of the visionaries of the digital printing industry.   He sold Indigo to HP, Inc. nearly 25 years ago.  Since that time, he has put all of his focus to developing an innovative transfer technology using inkjet printing technology, officially going public at DRUPA 2012.  He coined a new term to describe his inkjet-based technology, which he called Nanography.  

Nanography?  Small writing?  The digital printing technology of the next generation?   Whatever the interpretation, those attending Mr. Landa’s 2012 press conference the day before DRUPA opened were not disappointed.   As the inventor of Indigo liquid toner technology, beneficiary of HP’s $800M+ purchase of Indigo in 2001, and showmanship rivaling the late Steve Jobs, expectations could not have been greater for the unveiling of Mr. Landa’s next technology.

With smoke wafting in the background (but no mirrors), Mr. Landa opened his presentation (repeated 30 times during the 14-day show to “sold-out” crowds who needed a ticket to gain entry to prevent overcrowding) by citing the four factors he believed are necessary to convert 98% of the pages that are still printed using offset technology to digital print:

Landa’s requirements for digital printing to displace offset

1.       Print quality equal to offset

2.       Productivity equal to offset

3.       Cost-per-page equal to offset

4.       Ability to print on any substrate

The first two objectives at that time were more or less been achieved by nanography.  The last two were not.  In the summer of 2025, sadly Landa as ran out of time and cash.

After a cumulative investment (and now loss) of approximately $1.8B, on June 12, 2025, Landa issued a press release stating it was laying off 100 employees out of its workforce of 500, due to a “temporary fall in sales due to the war”.  

But there was more bad news.  On June 29, 2025 Landa announced its European investors had ceased further investments and loans.  Landa has over $400M in debt and excluding hard assets and intellectual property about $5M in cash, $50M in inventory, and $55M in outstanding payments from customers.  In a nut shell, Landa ran out of cash and time.   If only they’d had been able to develop a bigger installed base generating a steady and large stream of consumable revenue…something that has and will protect all the other major digital printing equipment manufacturers for decades to come. 

With all strategic investors bowing out due to concern of future investment requirements, in September 2025 Landa was acquired by the Israeli private equity firm FIMI Opportunity Funds following Landa's filing for court protection from debt. FIMI invested $80 million for 100% ownership.  FIMI will have to invest significantly more to take the technology forward, or it could choose to cash cow the ink/service annuity of the existing 52 Landa presses installed worldwide without taking the technology further forward.