Packaging Impressions expects 100% growth with Acuity LED 1600

Fialoke, who recently opted for a Fujifilm Acuity LED 1600 for his company, says, “We expect 100% growth after the Acuity installation. However, familiarising our customers with technology is the major concern.”

Anil, and his brother, an engineer from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, jointly started the moulding business. “We entered into label printing for two reasons – our existing customers supported and pushed us and also, we wanted to offer labels to them. Our moulding bottles go to more than 350 clients in India, including the big daddies of the industry, including ITC, Modicare, HUL and others.”

Packaging Impressions is one of the few label printers who prints labels on wide-format printers, and has three Mimaki, one KM C6000 and the recently installed Fujifilm Acuity LED 1600.

“We use wide-format technology because of demand for short-run labels. Mostly, we print less than 5,000 labels, and we found that the technology is suitable for us. While more than 80% of the jobs are under 5,000 labels, we can print from a single label to around 5000 labels,” Fialoke says.

He adds the company is running the Acuity machine for around ten hours a day and is now planning to run it for around 16 hours a day. “Right now, we are converting 500 sqft per day,” he says.

On the USP of the new machine, he adds, “Printability of white inks, spot UV and varnish were not possible for us earlier. Now, we can print variety of media and number is enormous because short-runs always require variety of media.”

Wedding boxes and cards are the new segments for Packaging Impressions and they are expanding into those segments. Fialoke believes print enhancement is most important business factor. “We are also into high-end gift box manufacturing. We are planning to expand into this segment as well,” he says.

As expansion increase, Fialoke is also being helped by his daughter, Deepali Fialoke, who recently joined the business.

Before settling for Acuity LED 1600, Fialoke says they looked at other machines as well. “Print quality on different media, dots per inches, and sharpness of images and printability of small fonts, even less than four, were the few points that won us over,” he says.

A strong supporter of digital printing technology, Fialoke says his dream is to establish the company as a digital label printing facility. “Because I believe ten years down the line, offset and flexo will be obsolete and digital will be upgraded for long-run jobs too,” he says, adding that he may soon add a Fuji Graphium in his facility.

With around 15 employees and housed in a 300 sq yards area, Packaging Impression expects double growth.