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Increasing use of tablets and iPads is robbing children of their dexterity and learning skills according to a report from the UK’s Association of Teachers and Lecturers at their recent annual conference in Manchester. It seems that despite having the ability to swipe a screen, today’s infants are losing the ability to play with building bricks and learning to write as a result of early addiction to tablets.

There was a huge amount of confidence in Benny Landa shown by printers from around the world when they saw Nanography^® unveiled at drupa in 2012. Over 400 of them saw enough in a short visit to Dusseldorf to invest in the future technology by placing a letter of intent to purchase a new Nanographic Printing^® press and place a deposit to secure their place in the queue.

As a member of the Star Trek generation, the adventures of Captain James Kirk, Commander Spock and the crew of the Starship Enterprise were a highlight of my week’s teenage TV viewing. I would watch awestruck at some of the technology they used, like the handheld communicators and tricorder mapping system which have turned into today’s reality of smartphones and Google Earth. It seemed so futuristic at the time.

I still remember our first meeting with Benny back in November 2013. It was really intriguing how aligned our way to approach new territories is – based on true insight and taking a comprehensive approach to create value for our customers. As a leading true specialty chemicals company ALTANA is driven by innovation, it always has been, and so is Landa. We share the same values and have the same passion for excellence.

My wife has been nagging me to tidy up my study. You know the sort of thing, “You can’t expect the children to have to tidy it up when you die” and “Why do you want to keep those old things?” Of course she does not understand my attachment to some of the items which include my first mobile phone and pictures of my beloved Nottingham Forest Football Club, but she reserves most of her scorn for the boxes which my various Apple gadgets were packaged. “Why on earth do you want to keep boxes that you will never use again?”

Of all the different departments that I saw on my recent visit to Rehovot, the one that we have jointly established with our digital front end (DFE) supplier EFI caught my attention. Here teams of software engineers from Landa Digital Printing and EFI are integrating and developing one of the fastest and most powerful DFEs in the market, ready for the beta testing of our B1 (41 in. /1,050 mm) format Landa S10 Nanographic Printing™ Press. Some of the brightest brains in the software business are working on this challenge. For me personally it was good to see our announcement of the partnership starting to bear fruit.

As the world’s top soccer teams jet off to Brazil for the World Cup, I have been in Israel observing Landa’s team members at work close up. The similarities between the football players, coaches, staff and fans heading to Brazil on the one hand, and Benny Landa’s Nanographic Printing^® technology team and our customers on the other hand, are striking.

At exhibitions, conferences and customer meetings, I often get a request for a brochure on the Landa Nanographic Printing^® Presses. Perhaps being asked for a brochure is surprising in this digital age, but it is a reflection of a wider need for a printed product. Of course it would be easy to offer a PDF version for them to download or perhaps even on a memory stick, but customers expect me to let them have a something physical that they can handle, something tactile that they can see, touch, and feel. The content is important but the memento of the occasion is the really important part.