Under the terms of the agreement, Komori will licence Landa's Nanographic printing technology for use in its next-generation digital presses for the commercial and packaging markets.

The partnership is separate to Komori's previously announced deal with Konica Minolta to develop two inket presses and an electrophotographic device based on the BizHub C8000 under the DigitalOnDemand banner.

Yoshiharu Komori, president, chairman and chief executive of the Japanese offset press manufacturer, said: "There is an ever-growing customer demand for shorter and shorter run lengths as well as very short turnaround times.

"To meet these commercial printing market needs, we have embraced Landa Nanographic printing as a powerful solution for our next generation sheetfed and webfed digital systems that use water-based inks."

In addition, Landa Corporation founder, chairman and chief executive Benny Landa, reavealed that the paper transport in his company's own Nanographic sheetfed presses was based on Komori technology.

"We have enjoyed an intimate relationship with Komori, which is our supplier of paper handling platforms for our new Nanographic sheetfed presses," said Landa.

"Komori was the first to be exposed to our technology and was the first to share our vision. I am therefore particularly delighted that Komori is the first-to-be-announced global strategic partner with whom we will be sharing this huge market opportunity."

Landa added that Komori, with its "highly respected position and broad market access" was "well placed to accelerate the worldwide adoption of Landa Nanographic printing".

"Komori’s decision to adopt Nanography for its next generation of digital presses is an important milestone in the march of this innovative technology and significantly broadens its potential to become the new industry standard for mainstream printing," he concluded.

Landa will provide Komori with its Nanographic printing technology and Landa NanoInk, which are at the heart of the Nanographic printing process.

NanoInk is comprised of pigment particles only tens of nanometres in size, which are said to be extremely powerful absorbers of light and to enable unprecedented image qualities.

Landa Corporation said that its Nanographic printing process was characterised by "ultra-sharp dots of extremely high uniformity, high gloss fidelity and the broadest CMYK colour gamut" .

The process uses so-called "ink ejectors" to create the digital ink images which get applied to the printing stock in a process that can operate at "extremely high speeds" and creates images with "remarkable abrasion and scratch resistance".

The process is said to be able to print on any off-the-shelf substrate, from coated and uncoated paper stocks to recycled carton; from newsprint to plastic packaging films - all without requiring any kind of pre-treatment or special coating - and no post-drying.

Nanographic images are only 500 nanometres thick - about half the thickness of offset images - which the company said enabled it to produce the lowest cost-per-page digital images in the industry.

Further details of Landa's Nanographic printing process and presses are being kept tightly under wraps ahead of the company's Drupa press conference on 2 May.

A spokesman for Landa Corporation confirmed that Landa's Nanographic print technology would only be seen on the company's own stand (Hall 9, A73) at Drupa 2012 and would not be present on the Komori stand (Hall 15, D04).