Altana Seeks Insolvency Proceedings Against Another B. Landa Company

Altana Netherlands B.V. filed a petition on Tuesday with the Central District Court seeking an order to open insolvency proceedings against Landa Labs, the research and innovation arm of businessman Benny Landa’s group. Altana is the investment and financing arm of Germany’s Altana AG, which makes products for coatings, paints, cosmetics and printing worldwide. Landa Labs was founded in 2012 and previously held shares alongside Altana in Landa Corporation, which ran into financial trouble last year and was recently sold to FIMI in court proceedings.

According to the petition, Landa Labs failed to repay a 16 million euro loan from Altana that fell due on May 20, 2025. Altana says the company did not pay either the principal or accumulated interest. The filing also says Landa Labs tried to arrange a separate $10 million loan from Mizrahi Tefahot Bank to fund its ongoing operations, but the bank withdrew after parallel insolvency proceedings began against another group company, Landa Corporation.

After negotiations failed and a formal payment demand sent in January 2026 went unanswered, Altana asked the court to open proceedings and appoint an administrator. The petition, filed by attorneys Guy Eido, Itai Shani and Keren Reichbach Segal of Gornitzky & Co., says the company has been unable to meet its obligations for a long time, has no enough cash for day-to-day expenses, depends on loans from its controlling shareholder and others, and has additional debts it cannot repay. In April, the company itself reportedly asked to amend the loan agreement and proposed pushing repayment to the end of December 2026.

Benny Landa, 80, built his name as the founder of Indigo, later sold to HP in 2001 in one of Israel’s best-known tech exits. After that sale he founded Landa Group, which focused on nanotechnology-based printing, energy and materials. From that activity came Landa Digital Printing, which developed Nanography for packaging and commercial printing but never reached profitability. In June 2025, the company sought court protection after accumulating debt of about 1.7 billion shekels, and in September 2025 the Central District Court approved a debt settlement under which FIMI bought it for 80 million dollars. Another Landa venture, Lucix, was sold at the end of 2024 to the Belgian-Indian Phoenix group for about 4 million dollars after collapsing with the global synthetic-diamond market.

No response was received from Landa Labs, and the court has not yet ruled.