Picture Gallery: What will happen next in corrugation?

Kirit Modi: "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.

Kirit Modi, president of ICCMA kicked off a powered-pack panel discussion with 12 panelists who discussed "The challenges of moving to performance based parameters."

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 trust defict must be reduced" was the buzz among 350 delegates at the ICCMA conference being hosted along side the IndiaCorr Expo – SinoCorrugated 2014 at the Bombay Exhibition Centre in Goregaon.

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.

"The cost composition of box manufacturing is 90% for paper, starch and steam"

Statistics say, "Of the entire pie, only 226 box manufacturing plants are fully automatic while the remaining 2750 have semi-automatic operations." The growth potential for India is phenomenal.

Pankaj Shah, chairman at WICMA, says, "M&As have two drivers; sustainability and succession from the seller's side and expansion and experience from the buyer's side"

The panel unanimously said that the industry is fragmented, there is excess capacity where technology still has a long way to go.

Dev Priya Industries based out of Rudrapur has a total of seven automatic paper production units at their facility. They were the first in India to opt for a fully automatic plant from Voith. Dev Priya's current capacity produces 1000 tonnes of paper per month.

For Laxmi Paper Board, the box making industry, with the food and pharma industry as its consumers, is the barometer for the country's economy. The firm has a production capacity of eight to ten tonnes per month.

Seven-11 Inks had on offer its water-based ink solution for box printing. (l-r) Narendra Modi and Rajkumar Lodha. Said Modi, "We have three ink sets Aqua Eco, Aqua Super and Aqua Premium. The Super and the Premium sets can print at a speed of 250 boxes/ min." The company produces 20-25 tonnes inks each month.

ReShilp, The JV of Italy-based Re SpA and Shilp Gravure manufactures air shafts and safety chucks at its facility in Ahmedabad. On display at the show were upgraded tension controllers

Vinod Nawab, director of Param ERP Solutions feels that Indian printing industry is passing through a print ERP era and he says, "MIS has become a need rather than a luxury."

Bobst India launched the Flexo Folder Gluer- Discovery model.

Sarada Papers and Boards produces papers for both packaging and commercial printing segments. In the packaging space they produce 60% boards for the corrugation industry and 40 % for the mono-cartons. In the commercial print segment, Sarada produces art boards. Current conversion capacity of the company is 350 tonnes and they plan to expand it to 700 tonnes by March 2015.

BST Sayona were first timers at the show. The company introduced web guiding and controllers for the corrugation lines.

PrintWeek India Pre-press Company of the Year 2014, Creative Graphics showcased their flexo pate making solutions for the corrugation industry.

Esko finalised four Kongsberg V tables at the show. Besides these,there are three Kongsberg V series installations.

Sandeep Wadhwa of Wadpack during a conversation with PrintWeek India's Anand Srinivasan and Rushikesh Aravkar said, "There is a lack of continuity at the brand end. This is because people at mid management level keep changing. Therefore good packaging ideas get killed."

Sweden-based Emba are the pioneers in the flexo folder gluer technology. They have three installations of their automatic plant in Dhanalakshmi Packaging, Girnar and South India Paper Mills. A big ticket installation is expected from the company in 2015.

Macart's Boxjet machine was launched at Pamex show in 2013. From then the company has constantly upgraded the machine to suit the corrugation industry. At the show Macart sold a machine to a Vasai-based firm with several orders in the pipeline.

BHS Corrugated India, a subsidiary of Germany-based BHS Corrugated has 41 splicers, 51 sets of corrugating rollers, one automatic corrugating line and one wet-end line in India.

Erhardt + Leimer introduced the CorrAligner machine. The CorrAligner system guides the webs without mechanical contact to the edge through usage of non-crash-rolls.

Sangeet Kumar Gupta, director, Finsys Infotech gave live demonstrations of its ERP solutions for packaging and corrugation segments segments.

SL Kulkarni Cyril Graphics has two big ticket installations at the Ahmedabad-based Canpac trends.