Education In-Plant, Abeka, Orders a Landa S10P

Landa Digital Printing today announces that Abeka Print Shop, a world leading education in-plant printer serving one million students in homeschool families and Christian schools around the world, has ordered a Landa S10P Nanographic Printing Press. The company will use the seven-color S10P with inline coater for its flourishing flashcard business, as well as additional products. 

Abeka expects to add 100 million pages of additional capacity, annually, with the Landa S10P. The company also said that it is set to unlock 15,000 hours in labor savings per year – a substantial cost reduction in today’s market. 

Abeka chose the Landa S10P because it is the only digital press providing the format and speed Abeka requires. 
 
Plant Manager Stephen Riffel, a 14-year veteran of Abeka, explains, “The thought process regarding the Landa S10P centered, initially, on its ability to support our flashcard business. We do a lot of them for preschoolers and grade school students, and we’re doing more and more every year – so increasing capacity for that was a prerequisite. However, on investigating the S10P’s wider capabilities, the flexibility to produce other products was hugely appealing to us, too.” 

Press speed, color consistency and productivity on the Landa are all impressive, as is print quality and color vibrancy. “Exactly what we need, especially for products to appeal to kids and families,” Riffel says. 

“Cost per page is another reason why we chose the Landa S10P,” says Riffel. “We know precisely what our costs are on every job, and it was a simple matter to calculate the productivity gains against costs with the S10P.” 

Abeka Print Shop’s 98 full time employees currently print two billion pages — or 10,000,000 books, 2,000,000 flash card sets and 2,000,000 miscellaneous education resources — on both offset and digital, web and sheetfed presses, annually. Additionally, demand across all categories is increasing. The surge in homeschooling and Christian schools over the past few years has brought over 20,000 new homeschoolers to Abeka, for a total of one million students being supported worldwide.

The Landa S10P’s B1 format also provides Abeka with even more options for better utilization of the company’s other presses. Riffel says that once the press is installed, the company will pull work from its sheetfed offset press as well as move short run work from a smaller digital printer to the Landa. This will allow the plant to to move other pages to offset, making it possible for short run jobs not to go on the offset press at all. 

“The production flexibility a Landa press gives you is considerable,” Riffel says. “Landa is unquestionably leading the way into next-generation approaches to education communication.” 

Heberto Pachon, Landa Americas general manager, says, “We are delighted to welcome Abeka to Landa. It is a world-class business; and we are excited to see how the S10P will permit Abeka to better serve its huge global educational community. Our congratulations and thanks to Stephen and his colleagues at Abeka.”
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