The manufacturing
Alan Barretto: We have been manufacturing label presses in Chennai since the last four years.
Peter Eriksen: We are moving into a brand new facility in Chennai starting 1 January, 2012 of about 8,000 sq/ft. We will have a larger capacity, a new look and we shall be able to utilise it in a different way; have facilities for demos and testing.

AB: At present we manufacturing 10 machines per year, but after we move into the new facility, we should be able to double our capacity. It will mainly serve the Indian market.

At present, we think that there are about 150-160 machines, which come to India of which 15-20 are high quality flexo machines of the Nilpeter category. The others are smaller machines of Chinese make and they all add up to 150-160 mark. We compare our machine with Mark Andy, Gallus or a Gidue.

At Labelexpo
PE: We are showing the 10-colour local made FB 3300. This is pre-sold machine so it is configured for the customer, Ajanta Packaging.

Label industry trends
AB: There is a growth sentiment, not growth in terms of actually numbers. We were talking to some of the raw material suppliers in the self-adhesive segment, and they were talking about a 15% growth. But the market as such may not be growing so much, but the movement of paper label to self-adhesive market may be boosting the growth number for the raw materials suppliers. So I can’t say that our market is growing by 15%.

In 2012-13, we should sell about seven machines, which would take the overall tally of Nilpeter presses in India to 17 machines.

Shifts in the label market
AB: Self-adhesive labels is an end-user drive, the one who is actually determining the usage. The trends in itself is to have the wash-off labels, which will move away from wet-glue. I was telling you about the trends in the raw material market. A large part of that is negatively impacting the wet-glue market.

We believe that the beer market, which is presently using the wet-glue will move completely to self-adhesive application. One or two players have already moved to self-adhesive methods of labelling. We have seen it on the global scene and we will see it here too.

PE: A trend we are seeing is that customers are looking for customisation, that differentiation in the products they supply; they are looking for a niche product.

A lot of our machine, and the requirements received from our customers are for custom-made machines for special applications. We are doing a lot of that here in India and we are building machines according to requirements like the one we have at the show here. So it’s not just simple eight-colour machine manufacturing –  it’s about the the ability to add inter-passage, hot-foiling, die-cutting.