Noida’s Captain installs Bobst VisionFold

Noida-based Captain Offset Printers has recently installed a Bobst VisionFold 110 A2 folder-gluer. According to Vivek Rakheja of Captain, the investment is a part of the company’s recent initiative to streamline and upgrade the production process, under which the company has opted for multiple equipment, human resources, processes, constructional changes and others.

14 May 2018 | By Rahul Kumar

“We were struggling on quality and production with our existing India-made folder-gluer. Sometimes corners did not match and sometimes boxes were not fixed because of bad gluing. As a result, we decided to go for Bobst,” Rakheja said.

He has specialisation in tube light cartons which are lengthy (around 1300mm long) compared to normal cartons. He has added some additional equipment at the feeder to cater lengthy tube light cartons with the help of Bobst technical team.

He added that though initially the investment seemed like an expensive affair, in the long run, it is a value for money equipment. “Like most of our investments, we did not even calculate the ROI for the Bobst folder-gluer. We needed the machine and we got it,” he said.

Rakheja said with margins shrinking day-by-day, upgrading the process is the only way to stay afloat in the market.

While the Rakheja family is in the printing business for generations (Vivek Rakeja’s grandfather owned a commercial and books printing facility in Delhi), Captain Offset Printers was established by Beer Rakheja in 1983 and is run by him and his two sons, Vishal and Vivek.

“We started with one offset press and today, we have five multi-colour offset presses and all are in big formats,” Rakheja said, adding that since tube light and appliances cartons are of bigger sizes, the company needed to have bigger printing machines.

“In 2003, we started a corrugation unit and right now, we convert around 400 tonne of kraft paper per month. The corrugation machines are from China while we use Indian kraft. We produce ‘E’ and narrow-flute corrugation. Most of our customers come from electrical and appliances segments,” he added.

Now, Captain is looking to expand its shopfloor. “We are planning to expand to mono cartons production. Primary and secondary packaging is also on radar,” he said, adding, “However, the next investment will be in finishing.”