Boettcher's first rubber roller manufacturing plant in India

Boettcher has been present in India since 2006, supplying rubber roller through imports. With Boettcher India plant located in Faridabad, NCR of Delhi, the 100% subsidiary of Boettcher System, will be able to save time with short delivery periods as well as cost.

"To begin with, Boettcher India will manufacture rubber rollers only for offset - sheetfed and web," said Sandeep Saini, country manager for Boettcher India.

Boettcher will manufacture only one form of the three it supplies. "We will go with only recovery rollers at the plant, while the other two forms, exchange and new or one-way, will continue to be sourced from our plant in Cologne, Germany," said Saini.

The company has established a laboratory to customise its products according to demand. The machines for manufacturing rollers have come from Boettcher's machinery park, while the compounding material and chemicals required for producing rubber rollers will all come from Germany. "Our customers can now be assured that they will receive best global-quality product at local cost," said Saini.  “Whatever the benefit we will derive by producing locally will be passed on to the customer.”

Among the participants present for the Boettcher event in Mumbai were Firoze Reshamwala of Lucid Prints, Saubhagya Seksaria of New Jack Printing, Uttam Nikmar of Newtech Packaging, Minoo Davar of Spenta, Vasudevan and Jibu James from The Times of India, Ramachandran from DNA, and Dr Shanke from Dainik Bhaskar.

Reshamwala and Seksaria are users of Boettcher's rubber rollers and are of the opinion that while expense on rollers and blankets can't be avoided, choosing a product based primarily on its price is fraught with danger.  "Boettcher rubber rollers are expensive, but they go the distance," said Reshamwala.

Explaining the importance of on-press consumables, Seksaria, said, "Rollers, and for that matter blankets and chemicals, are at the heart of printing machine and are there to a do a job, namely, transfer ink and dampening solution to the printing plate, blanket and then to printed product."

Boettcher claims an 80% share in India’s new or one-way rollers market.