First blood in the looming battle between HP Indigo and Landa Nanography, the latest venture of Indigo founder, Benny Landa, has gone to the established player.
Alon Bar-Shany, GM of HP Indigo quickly superseded the upbeat announcement by Landa that Cimpress, the owner of international web-to-print business Vista Print, has placed an order for 20 Nanographic Presses. One day later he claimed that the same company has also bought 20 HP Indigo 12000 digital presses. This comes on top of an order from Shutterfly, the US-based web-to-print photo business, for 25 HP Indigo 12000s.
Landa was very much mentor to the young Bar-Shany in the days before HP bought his Indigo company. Since then the US giant, one of the largest corporations in the world, has poured millions of R&D dollars into the business and its gone from strength to strength. HP Indigo is the leading digital printing supplier to the industry.
The rivalry between the two companies is now inescapable given their common founder, Israeli roots and digital printing focus. The opening broadsides are likely to be a taste of what’s to come.
The scale of the investment by the two web-to-print companies runs into many millions and signifies the consumer-based printers are abandoning offset in favour of digital printing for its run-of-one capability. The Shutterfly deal especially adds lustre to the quality claims of the high-end HP Indigo 12000 presses – the photo album market is among the most quality sensitive in the industry.
The scale of the purchases dwarfs other suppliers’ announcements at the show. Xerox celebrated the sale of its first Trivor 2400 inkjet press to a Netherlands printer, Galahad Management Services. Heidelberg claimed its 1000th Versafire, its Ricoh-based digital press.