Winners of PrintWeek India Performance Awards 2013

PrintWeek India Printing Company Of The Year

Pragati Offset (Hyderabad)
Tel: 91-40-2338 0000 / harsha@pragati.com

Congratulations to Pragati Offset, for taking the top honour. The financial performance reflected gross sales and profit before tax increase by 11.80% and 4.1%, being the highest in the category with an overall net worth during this period which increased by 16.40%.

Established in 1962, Pragati covers a full gamut of print needs, from company profiles to brochures and catalogues, coffee-table books to calendars, folding cartons and labels to luxury rigid cartons as well as point-of-sale material.

According to our official auditor, during the year, the company’s fixed assets increased by 4.89% and the net current asset has increased by 9.18%, also being highest in the category. Capital investments included label solutions, a machine which allows the company to make labels with linerless or liteliner technology. This is a technology which allows use of waste by-product in labels as liner. The company has also placed an order for two new seven-colour sheetfed offset presses.

According to Pragati, the company has managed this level of growth for both the top and bottom lines. “Being a zero-debt company has allowed us to get the best procurement prices by paying vendors in a timely fashion. Our vendors often go the extra mile to service our requirements due to these reasons.”

And though the profit before tax has decreased by 1.48% and return on capital employed decreased by 2.17% in the corresponding period of the previous year, there is a corresponding increase in the salaries as a percentage of sales by 1.01%.

The figures also reflect a corresponding increase in expenditure on staff by 20.28% and this only confirms the belief of P Narendra, the director of this celebrity print company of which he is also the face. He says, “I believe that in a firm which has 100 employees, if 98 are good, the other two do not matter. Even so, I have not given up my faith on people because when I say ‘Team Pragati’ I mean it because it’s the team which makes Pragati.” Pragati has 1,800 employees working for plants at Hyderabad and offices across India.

The year 2012-13 has seen Pragati garner a lot of awards and accolades, having won seven awards at the Asian Print Awards competition, 42 awards at IndiaStar 2013, following by three WorldStar wins for India. And now, Pragati is the proud PrintWeek India Company of the Year 2013.
 

Commended
BrandMark Solutions (Mumbai)
Gautam Paper Udhyog (Surat)
International Print-o-Pac (Noida)
Manipal Technologies (Manipal)
Replika Press (Kundli)

 
Post-Press Company Of The Year

International Print-o-Pac (New Delhi)
Tel: 91-130-2219044-45-46 / rsinghvi@ippindia.com

AND

Replika Press (Kundli)
Tel: 91-130-2219 044-45-46 / info@replikapress.com

The Post-Press Company of the Year Award has two winners, International Print-o-Pac (IPP) and Replika Press.

Both the company’s financial performance reflect increase in gross sales and profit before tax, and substantial increase in expenditure on staff. However, Replika’s gross sales and tax at 25.73% and 8.83% stands higher then IPP’s 13.24% and 3.91%. IPP’s increased fixed asset at 1.47% and decreased net current asset at 5.69 is better than Replika’s fixed assets, which saw a decrease by 24.33%, while the net current has reduced by 25.12%. The current ratio rate of Replika, 1.55:1, is a little better than IPP’s 1.27:1.

However, the print entries sent by the respective company settled the score, and the points were evened in favour of both the companies.

International Print-o-Pac (IPP) commenced its operations as a small repro house in 1982. It evolved as a commercial printer in 1993, and set up a packaging plant at Noida in 1999. It has made investments including installation of a brand-new heatset web offset press, the first of its kind in North India. As a book and magazine printer, IPP now serves over 25 book publishers and prints over 100 magazines each month. The company launched its range of stationery brand, Paperisto, two years ago. Today it has a dedicated team of 25 persons, who reach 450 distribution points and over 50 wholesalers, and are looking to double the stationery sales in this fiscal year.

Renamed as Replika Press in 1998, the company is an export-oriented unit spread in two units with a covered area of more than 1,75,000 sq/ft campus in Kundli. The book specialist has set a few milestones in the last few years, running into hundreds of thousands of books from start to finish in a record number of days. Slumdog Millionaire, is one of them. Last year, Replika was assigned to produce two-crore copies of the book, Fifty Shades of Grey, a three-volume set for the Indian market with a committed date to be released worldwide. The company accomplished the deadline, and accolades from the publisher. (Refer to the Picture Gallery on Page 66-67)
 

Commended
A&M Enterprise (Ahmedabad)
Gautam Paper Udhyog (Surat)
Mudrika Labels (Mumbai)

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 Pre-Press Company Of The Year

Trigon Digital Solutions (Mumbai)
Tel: 91-22-4277 8700 / anil@trigondigital.in

The Mumbai-based company Trigon Digital Solutions, the pre-press specialist, which boast of a tag-line “Your imagination is our limit”, is the Pre-Press Company of the Year on the solid financial performance it returned in the year 2012-13. The profit before tax increased by 27.39%, net current asset by 61.74% and overall net worth during this period rose by 95.39%, the highest in the entire category; while gross sales increased by 19.70%, expenditure on staff by 23.78%. The current ratio for the year is 1.67:1.

The company with three locations in India (Mumbai, Bengaluru and New Delhi), says, it stands between creative brand vision and its culmination in print and delivers timely, high quality pre-press services. “We fingerprint and standardise the print machine, ink and the substrate, so that brands can deliver the same value and retain its original colours, no matter where it is printed.” That’s the power of pre-press.

Trigon specialises in ideation and creation of packaging design, pre-press colour separation, and proofs and mock-up on actual substrate. Besides pioneering these, the company has pioneered services like proofing on actual packaging substrates, 3D visualisation of the pack, structural designing with technology partners such as Esko, Kodak and HP, etc.

Commended
Alia Creative Consultants (Mumbai)
Gautam Paper Udhyog (Surat)
Honeycomb Creative Support (Bengaluru)

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Packaging Converter Of The Year

Utility PrintPack (Ahmedabad)
Tel: 91-22-6144 6600 / glenn@utilityprintpack.com

Utility PrintPack, winner of the Packaging Convertor Award in 2009 and 2011, wins the Packaging Convertor of the Year Award this time, making it a hat-trick of sorts. The company win comes on the back of four engaging and stunning entries, which brought Utility’s skill at adding value to the fore and used them wisely.

The Rebecca entry, a packaging for Rebecca Atwood-produced perfume, was designed in-house and the use of jute fabric wrap on Kappa board, was in keeping with the fragrance’s very natural, divine and soothing effect, says Utility. The company used pearl pink paper and wrapped it on Kappa board made on case making machine for the Urban Edition package, giving it a sharp foil stamping to enhance its look. It used magnet for locking the box. Metallised inner deep embossing gives the carton a stunning look. A flock tray ensures that the product placed in the box holds firmly. The other two entries, Elysees Fashion Parfum and Satin Flower were also impressive in terms of its design, execution and effectiveness.

Ahmedabad-based Utility produced 5,000 to 26,000 numbers of these packages and used Esko’s Scope 7 workflow, Screen CTP, a Bobst punch-maker, and Heidelberg CD74 six-colour press. It is a huge exporter of cartons of luxury and liquor production with customers all around the world. Even as we were going to print, Utility was finalising a deal, which should reposition its status in the luxury carton space.

Commended
Any Graphics (Noida)
First Impression (Mumbai)
International Print-o-Pac (Noida)
Param Packagiing (Mumbai)
Perfect Pack (Mumbai)
Screen Art Enterprises (Mumbai)

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Small Printer Of The Year

Perfect Print & Pack (Vasai, Maharashtra)
Tel: 91-9320053555 / hspatel_10@yahoo.co.in

The Small Printer of the Year Award category has, as in the previous editions, thrown up a new name. Perfect Print & Pack, the Vasai-based print-packaging company has followed the illustrious footsteps of the previous winners, CMYK (Jalgaon) in 2009; Vyoma Graphics (Pune) in 2010, PrintExpressions (Delhi) in 2011; and Prabhat Printing Works (Pune) last year.

Perfect Print & Pack specialises in packaging, with 80% of its business coming from this segment.

A look at the financial performance figures will show that the business strategy employed by Perfect Print & Pack has generated substantial volume of business, revenue and profit. The company registered solid sales at 34.11%, and its profits before tax was a phenomenal 585.35%. It’s fixed asset increased by 12.90%, the net current asset increased by 61.30% and the overall net worth during 2012-13 has increased by 81.70%.

Harshad Patel, managing director of Perfect Print & Pack, started his career as a medical representative in 1986, before setting up Perfect Laminators, because he liked “this lamination business”. He has two reasons for this. “It did not need too much of manpower and two, it was profitable.” Perfect Lamination registered smooth growth, which lead to Patel deciding to expand his business to printing. In 2002, he invested in a two-colour press, and in 2006, a four-colour press and three galas to accommodate these additions. The print journey for Patel was firmly on course. Last year, the company invested in upgrading its six-colour press bought towards the end of 2011 with an UV curing system, the Elmag Superfici, which he claims, “is perhaps the first such high-end system installed in India.”

Patel is a forward thinking entrepreneur, and is of the opinion that automation is a key to growth. “Investing in the latest technology will not only increase efficiency but will also help us in terms of faster turnaround time and reduce reliance on manpower,” he says.

Commended
Akruti (Pune)
Arun Art Printers (Jammu)
B P Lipeds (Chandigarh)
Sujilee Colour Printers (Kollam, Kerala)
Sumangal Press (Mumbai)
Vibgyor Arts (Kolkata)

Student Of The Year

Nikita Prabhu (SIES Graduate School of Technology, Navi Mumbai)

Among the applicants, Nikita Prabhu’s consistent academic records and research presentations during the course of her studies at SIES College of Printing and Packaging, Navi Mumbai, was outstanding. She showed a special zeal for package designing, a subject in which she has developed a keen interest. It was reflected by the project she undertook at Kraft Foods, (formerly Cadbury India). She completed the project in one year. Her responsibility was to develop a premium packaging which is innovative in design, choosing the right material for the premium pack, to check the feasibility of the new pack designs, to develop the prototypes of the shortlisted designs, estimating the cost of the new pack designs and to select the best design between all the alternatives.

Besides her project she has prizes at the inter-college technical paper presentation on ‘Brand Differentiation in the Market’. According to this paper presentation, she has explained as to how every brand is different from the other and how it has made a benchmark in the market with respect to its package, product, cost, handling and consumer support. There has been constant development in the package design, material and cost with respect to the consumers’ expectations and creating brand differentiation.

The achievements of Nikita Prabhu has made her a worthy winner of the PrintWeek India Student of the Year Award 2013.

Commended
Bijender Kaushik (Guru Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology, Hisar)
Budige Narsaiah (Boys Town Industrial Training Centre, Hyderabad)
Nikhil Kumar Wagh (PVG’s College of Engineering Technology, Pune)
Pooja Kulkarni (SIES Graduate School of Technology, Navi Mumbai)
Priyanka Nandanwade (SIES Graduate School of Technology, Navi Mumbai)
Sahil Gupta (Bharti Vidhyapeeth’s College of Fine Arts, Pune)

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