According to Gecht, the two companies have been working on developing a DFE “for a while”, but the deal was officially signed yesterday morning (21 January).
Speaking after the theatrical announcement live at Connect, Gecht said: “The teams have already begun working together, we have a team dedicated to this going to Israel. We’re serious about this, it’s a big machine with a high data rate, and we want to make sure we do our usual great job like with did with Xerox on the iGen.”
The new DFE will be based on EFI’s existing Fiery technology, but Gecht said that “Landa really likes the Fiery technology, but we will have to do some new things to support the speed and productivity of the technology, but the fundamentals are all there. There will be a lot of work though.”
The EFI DFE partnership follows Landa’s strategic partnership with Komori, announced last year.
The new DFE will be developed for static and variable data commercial, folding carton, point-of-sale, publishing, and flexible packaging applications on both Landa’s sheetfed and web presses.
According to the two companies the Fiery DFE will be used on the beta installations of the Landa S10 Nanographic Printing Press scheduled to start in Q4 2014.
The two companies said it would allow last minute changes on-the-fly and also collect and feedback live production data to the presses to support closed-loop color control and inspection.
In their joint statement the companies also said that the Fiery DFE will enable high-speed variable data printing on any standard offset stocks, fit into existing pre-press, production, post-press and business workflow and also “naturally fit into any printing operation, whether full offset, all-digital or hybrid offset/digital”.
Speaking at Connect, Landa Corporation chairman Benny Landa said: “We have 200 engineers working around the clock getting the products ready for delivery and every now and then we show customers improvement to the print quality and now, finally I can say the customers are very excited about the print quality.
"But these products running at 12,000sph at 1,200dpi with super high quality and multiple grey levels for every pixel requires unprecedented data rates and it's a phenomenal challenge.”
EFI connect opened yesterday at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. More than 1,000 EFI customers signed up for the global user event, the highest attendance in the event’s 15-year history.
According to Gecht, the focus of the event, in keeping with its spiritual Las Vegas home, is “five bets”: Automation, big data, inkjet, digital printing, and long-term partnerships.
“You can put your bets on anything you want, a lot of people put bets on other things, but I can tell you one thing: the only thing that will guarantee you’re not going to win is if you don’t place any bets. In our industry standing still is not an option,” said Gecht.
The event features more than 150 educational seminars covering subjects from MIS/ERP workflow, web-to-print, eCommerce, DFE print management and inkjet printing. For the first time it also includes a business development track led by industry analyst and consultancy firm InfoTrends.
Other features include technology exhibits from EFI, including wide-format kit and software, as well as partners including Canon, Esko, Kodak, Konica Minolta, Xerox and Zund.
The four-day event, which runs until Friday 24 January, is also serving as the springboard for the newly launched EFI Digital StoreFront 7, which integrates HTML5, and also EFI’s latest acquisition SmartLinc, which develops shipping management software with integrated print MIS/ERP connectivity.
