For over five years now, the colour green has been more than a mixture of yellow and cyan. For many ‘going green’ or becoming ‘sustainable’ are matters of great significant but not something that they themselves were doing enough about.

For many print companies, this would mean saving energy, cutting waste, and streamlining their supplies. In the quest to become sustainable there is nothing wrong with this.

For Repro India, the winner of the first PWI Green Printing Company of the Year 2014, it is “imbibed in nature” to use environmentally-friendly ways and methods in the printing business. “We bring efficiencies to our customer’s value chain by providing them a one stop solution to their needs, right from managing and repurposing content, to printing and binding to delivery anywhere across the globe,” says Kunal Vohra of Repro India. Repro India is certified ISO 9001-2008, ISO14000–2004, FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) & PEFC (Programme for Endorsement for Forest Certification) for our quality, environment and green initiative practices.

Even before the PrintWeek India Award, Repro had earned itself five Gold and three Silver trophies at the 28th Annual Chapter Convention on Quality Concepts (CCQC) 2014 organised by the Quality Circle Forum of India (QCFI) Mumbai Chapter on 20th and 21st September 2014.

From a total of 284 teams, Repro India and Times of India were the only printing companies; while Repro was the only from the commercial printing segment.

The other participating companies were Tata Steel Wire, Uttam Galva, Emami Biotech, CEAT, NTPC, RCF, Mazgaon Dock Ltd, IPCA Laboratories, Times of India, Kokio Camlin, Parle Products, Reliance Infra, Reliance Transmission, Ruchi Soya, Mukand Ltd etc.

This was Repro’s third successive year of participation. This year total eight teams from the shopfloor comprising of around 40 plus team members participated across different quality concepts such as Kaizen, 5S, TPM, CFT, Process Re-Engineering and Value Engineering.

Repro will now participate in the National Convention on Quality Concepts which is scheduled to happen this year in Pune on 19 to 22 December 2014.

 

Chairman Speak: Vinod Vohra

In terms of print legacy business, Repro has implemented the latest technology to enable a greater level of service to customers. The strategy of re-engineering products to fit different price- points has enabled Repro to give clients value.  This coupled with a strategy of having  long-term contractual agreements, has also helped build in greater cost and operational efficiencies, business predictability and therefore capacity civilisation. Print-on-Demand (or POD), Repro has been able to print books in very short runs, with a very tight turnaround time - sometimes as little as 24 hours. By doing this, the advantage to publishers is that they are able to print only the number of books they require - thus saving on obsolescence and inventory costs. Content management has been a focus area. By archiving, repurposing and warehousing content for our publishers, Repro is able to retain clients, as the firm functions as the guardians of their greatest asset - i.e., their content. The markets in Africa continued to grow. Every year the Indian book print firm,  added newer countries in Africa. Till 2013, Repro has a dominant presence in 22 out of 52 countries in Africa. This indicates the growth potential in a continent that has an enormous market for printed educational books. With strong relationships with both publishers as well as key government bodies, the focus on Africa continues. India, the second large market for educational books, continued to grow. The focus on education by the Indian government is throwing up large opportunities for printed books. In terms of operations, Repro has three locations – at Vashi, Surat and Chennai - continued to operate at optimum capacity. By printing its export commitments at the Surat SEZ, Repro has been able to achieve scale. Repro’s focus on IT remained strong. Using the latest IT infrastructure and workflows has made significant difference to operational efficiencies - and thus has added to profitability directly. Repro’s digital initiative is called Repro CloudStore. This is a transactional portal, through which users across the world can access  and purchase from a repository of books - both educational and  non-educational. This portal serves as a value addition to publishers who can reach their end-user without distribution costs. Quality has always been a differentiator. It has strengthened Repro India’s position as partner of choice to its Indian and international customer base.

Repro: Green Print Company of 2014

PrintWeek India introduced the PrintWeek India Green Printing Company of the Year. The initiative was supported by ITC PSPD. The Criteria: energy conservation, water conservation and treatment, waste management, sustainability and material, and awareness and training. The Jury’s statement: “These virtues, are their own rewards,” says N Muthu, principal counsellor at CII’s Green Business Center.