Ticking all the right boxes

Emba highlighted three installations of 175 QS Ultima machines in India with the latest one at Girnar Packaging in 2014. It has installed one machine each at Dhanalaxmi Group in 2011 and South India Paper Mills in 2012. 



According to Chiranjeevi Sastry, sales manager-SAARC nations for Emba Machinery, Emba was the pioneer of flexo folder-gluer (FFG) technology in the world when it introduced its first FFG in 1968.

175 QS Ultima features Emba’s patented non-crush technology. “The machine is designed to prevent crushing of the flutes from start to finish. This has been made possible with the help of Emba’s ultima feeder and vacuum transport technology,” said Sastry.

The USP of the machine as Sastry said is the ‘no feed roller’ concept which helps achieve enhanced feeding register accuracy even with light grade corrugated board at high speeds. “Also the kiss touch printing introduced by Emba has become an industry benchmark,” added Sastry.

Esko concludes the show with sale of four Kongsberg cutting tables
Esko announced the sale of its Kongsberg V24 cutting table to Surat-based Lily Packers, a subsidiary of Kaypee Group, on the first day of the IndiaCorr Expo-SinoCorrugated show in Mumbai.
 

On the third and final day, Esko rounded a successful show with announcement of the sale of three more Kongsberg V series cutting table, one to M K PrintPack, a packaging company based in Daman and an existing user of Esko products; one to Delhi-based L&E India; and one to Kirit Modi-led Bengaluru-based Pyramid Packaging.

The Kongsberg V24 table for Lily Packers fitted with a Flexi Head will produce samples, mock-ups, short runs and other corrugated specific applications, when installed at Lily Packers after the show.

Piyush Luharuwalla, spokesperson for Lily Packers, said, “To gain a competitive edge, one has to become customer-friendly in all terms. The customers are demanding more and to meet their high expectations it is very important to keep oneself updated with the latest technologies.”
He added, “Today’s challenge is to meet the commitments which could only be possible with perfection and the best technology, and though we evaluated other brands in this segment, we found the perfection and technology in Esko.”

Kongsberg V is available in two sizes: V24 at 1680 x 3050 mm / 66 x 120-inch and V20 at 1680 x 1270 mm / 66 x 50-inch, and can be used to cut, crease and plot a wide range of tasks.
Besides the three finalised at the show, there are three more Kongsberg V series installations done in the previous month, one at Parksons  Packaging, Stora Enso and Nestle.

Canpac opts for Param ERP
Ahmedabad-based Canpac Trends has invested in a Speedeq ERP software. “We are very satisfied by our decision to install the Speedpeq ERP software. It has been a great experience to work with Speedpeq software and get a good response when we are in need thereby delivering and understanding our customer needs,” said Nilesh Todi director, Canpac Trends.
 

Established in 1997, Canpac has recently expanded its set-up with a four lakh sq/ft land, on which stands 1.5 lakh sq/ft plant, in Ahmedabad’s Bavla Taluka. The company converts 1000 tonnes of paper and paperboards per month with a manufacturing facility for carton packaging.
Vinod Nawab of Param ERP said, “The kind of business growth we are expecting in coming years against the world business trends, I feel, the Indian printing industry is getting the attention of all world leaders in Print ERP. But where Param ERP scores over others is, they have to think from an Indian perspective in order to feed the specialised volumes in the MSME category.”
Some of Param’s clients are: Art-O-Print in Ahmedabad, Concorde Entreprises in Vadodara, Jaipur Printers in Jaipur, Multiplexes in New Delhi, Print Pack, Sama Printers in Nepal. The company claims it has 100 clients.

Rousing start to ICCMA conference by Batra and Dr Lamba 
Motivational speaker Vijay Batra used the “switch people on” technique among 350 delegates at the ICCMA conference on day one of the conference being hosted along side the IndiaCorr Expo – SinoCorrugated 2014 at the BEC trade fair grounds in Goregaon.
 

During his session in which he switched from English to Hindi, he reinstated the importance of success and happiness among business entrepreneurs. He drove the message of positive thinking and work ethics using examples that ranged from PM Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi, a Havell ad to a clip from the Bollywood blockbuster Munnabhai MMBS. In doing so, he connected with his audience.

Dr Anil Lamba, the bestselling author, financial literacy activist, and an international corporate trainer spoke about why businesses fail. He cited a RBI survey when he stated, it was not because of technology obsolescence; nor bigger and better competition; nor labour unrest. But it was because of financial mismanagement.

He stated that over 90 per cent of business failures can be  attributed to bad finance management. And this happens due to a widely-prevalent view that finance management is the responsibility of those in the finance department alone. The truth is that much of what happens in the finance department is accounting-related. Finance management or mismanagement is the result of the actions of everybody in the organisation. He added, “There is no such person as “non financial”. 

The author of the book, Romancing the Balance Sheet; and a practicing Chartered Accountant with degrees in Commerce and Law and a Doctorate in Taxation; concluded his session with a cry that businesses should make most efficient use of the working capital, and understand how an increase in sales actually impacts a profit.

Roy highlights competitiveness of box making
In a 30-minutes presentation, with a tag line of “A Mercedes for the price of a Suzuki” Subhasis Roy, business director, Bobst SA, highlighted offline converting solutions. 
 

According to Roy, “85% of the RSC (regular slotted container) boxes in the corrugation segment tend to have single or two colours.” But the samples on display during the open house indicate the possibilities for four colour jobs. This, as Roy commented is ideal for the beverage and vegetable oil industry. Today, in India, this is being rendered by the offset litho laminated route.
Roy said, “But these kinds of jobs could be printed on a FFG route or offline post-print flexo route like the Bobst Flexo 160 Vision and the quality is almost comparable to offset.” 

During a video clipping of a FFG box making, Roy demonstrated how a machine was running at 20,000 boxes per hour. But the machine can produce RSC boxes upto 26,000 boxes per hour. FFG618 is a 1.8 metre width machine and can handle quick changeovers upto 12 in one shift.
Roy added, “There is pressure on the corrugated industry by the end users to delivery good quality and better strength board and glued boxes and better graphics. The advent of JIT and short order changes and automatic case maker/ case formers will further push convertors to adopt better technology and automation in the process.”

In his presentation, he stressed that entrepreneurs should look at cost analysis study based on Indian labour costs and Indian raw materials. He implored the delegates to better understand, “pricing structures, payback, monthly EMI, per unit cost, funding sources and finance schemes.

Panel Discussion   |  ICCMA Conference Reduce trust deficit, say brand owners and box makers The take-away of the Indian Corrugated Case Manufacturers Association (ICCMA) conference on 14 October at the BEC trade ground in Goregaon was: “the trust deifict must be reduced.”  Yeshu Kant of Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) made opening remarks in which he stated the corrugated packaging industry in India is undergoing phenomenal transformation. Units are modernising and increasing number of players are switching to automatic process. The panelists unanimously agreed that there is a huge scope to build trust factor among the paper manufacturers, CFB box manufacturers and the brand owners. “One of the ways we can augment trust is to work together on the total cost of ownership for the customer. Changing mindsets is a big issue,” said Mukul Kumar of Cargill. Raminder Chadha of Worth Pack said, “As corrugators, we must emphasise on the role of the corrugated box as a part of supply chain. We must focus on handling transportation and other aspects of supply chain that can enhance or detoriate the funcitonaluty of the box.” Krishna Mohan of International Papers, the world’s top paper producer said both materials and machines are vital. He spoke of how a packaging designer said he would lose monies if he created a low weight product. He felt, “Standardisation and specifications are not the be all and end all. For example, RCT tested in one lab is not the same as one tested in another lab.” Ajay Patel of Laxmi Board and Paper Mills spoke about creating a performance based box which works in “vast and varied weather conditions.” Mohan added, “Humidity changes and temperature changes play a critical role, which is ignored. The other thing that as an industry we need to be cognisant of is that organised retail is going to require us to have boxes perform in a cold chain anf come out and be okay on a retail shelf. Paper is hygroscopic. We need to  adopt best practices to adopt from the UK and US.” Sandeep Wadhwa of Wadpack spoke about the lack of continuity at the brand end. This was because people at mid management level keep changing. Therefore good packaging ideas get killed. “In the western world at brands end they have specialists. His job over the years is to hone his skills and thats what is missing at the clients end. What happens in India is that when the whole team changes there is no way of tracking what has been discussed  three years prior. This leads to loss of packaging ideas. When you have a specialist, who would be rewarded likewise and would stay for a much longer period of time then you dont see,” said Wadhwa. Amit Gupta of Dev Group spoke of sustaining brand image through safety standards and measuring specs like width of flute. Ashish Khemka of KCL wondered why international companies don’t bring international box manufacturing standards in India. Khemka said, “The early movers have already initiated the first step. Now we need to generate an ecosystem jointly where we can take these ideas forward. Each customer has a different spec, each paper mill has different spec, if we are able to standardise, it would be easier for everyone to move ahead with it and whole idea would take momentum” Muthusubramanium of HUL said, “We need to create boxes as engineering structures and not as a commodity.” He lauded ICCMA and said, “All the members should become co-creators in creating beautiful brown boxes.” Kirit Modi concluded the session, stating, “all the stakeholders need to work on reducing the trust deficit; we need to work on standards together; and we need to make it mission indeed possible.”

Interview: Sandeep Wadhwa, Wadpack What is the state of the Indian corrugation industry? As I understand, the annual production of corrugated boxes in India is 4.6 million tonnes. The industry has seen a huge divergence.  It was reserved under small scale industry till 2003 and hence  had no access to technology. Corrugators were dependent on machines that were designed and developed in India. Today, we have access to better technology and automation, which makes a vast difference in production quality.  How different are your clients today? Across the range,  customers have moved from manual packing to high speed automated packaging systems. Secondly, our customers’ customer has become a lot more demanding as they have access to goods from all over the country and overseas. Hence they compare. Things which were acceptable 10 years back are no longer acceptable. Also, environmental health and safety standards has changed drastically. This has upped the demands for high quality corrugated boxes.    There is a lot of buzz about standardisation. What are your thoughts? When people talk about standardisation, we are confusing standardisation of processes to arrive at a conclusion rather than just having standards. We have standards available from different agencies but we don’t standardise the processes, that is the problem. The question is every single person has to follow a different standard. Fortunately in the USA they have Rule 41 which has been developed for transportation norms, we don’t have any such rule in India that can define corrugated box packaging requirements. Also in the world which is ever changing, standardisation also has to be relooked up on very often. How do you rate corrugation machinery available at the show? If you are doing run-of-the-mill jobs than any Indian or Chinese machine can suffice the purpose. However, if you are looking at precision and high speed, then you have to be very careful in terms of understanding of the technology and hence what is more suitable. Today, the Chinese, Indian, European  and Taiwanese manufacturers have come up with sophisticated machines. The European and Taiwanese machines are very close to each other. And the Chinese are a shade lower. It depends on what you need. What are the contributions and achievements of Wadpack to the industry advancement? We are one of the few plants in the world to offer 11 profiles of corrugated boxes. The plant is set-up over a five acre plot in Karnataka. We introduced glued manufacturers joint way back in 1993. Also, our plant is ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 certified. We introduced the concept of self certification of corrugated boxes. Earlier the boxes used to be tested at the customers end. We set up a full-fledged laboratory with equipment from L&W Sweden. We demonstrated accuracy level of 97% between customers lab and our lab. You also have a 7-ply facility. What are the applications? We recently invested in a 7-ply machine. The idea was to replace expensive plywood used in packaging with cheaper corrugated boards/boxes. Corrugated boxes are one-fifth the weight of plywood boxes and there is cost advantage the customer. From customers’ point of view there is freight saving as well. The applications include packaging of electronics, motors, automobiles spare parts and pallets among others.