Yet, the loss the tragic fire caused is insurmountable. The print fraternity in North India, especially those who know Nova, still cannot get over the tragedy. We, at PrintWeek India, also send wishes to the owners and stakeholders.

 

Industry insiders told PrintWeek India that the total amount of loss would be in the upwards of Rs 1 billion.

 

Consider this. It was a full-fledged print production company catering to both commercial, book printing and packaging printing. The cost of the fleet of machines it had, from pre- to post-press would go to the upwards of Rs 100 crore. All of it was destroyed in the fire. In terms of business, Nova was doing well. Thus, the facility was well stocked with paper and paperboard, ink and chemicals, all of which are expensive. Then there is the loss of daily business, including the job orders that were lost in the fire, the job orders Nova would fail to deliver after the fire and the job orders it would have received. Overall, it is a huge loss for the company as well as for the market, not to mention the loss of livelihood for the 12,000-odd workers who would remain jobless until Nova gets back to its feet soon.

 

When PrintWeek India dropped by the Nova office during a routine visit to Faridabad last year, there was optimism in the air. As we admired the modern décor of the office, we were told of the future. With the commercial print market shrinking, the company was now looking towards

print packaging. We were told that the company was working towards receiving all the necessary accreditation for packaging. It had also redeveloped the plant and invested in required machinery.

All of these are costs, which all went down in the fire.

 

The plant that was

According to the information we have, the Nova plant had multiple printing presses.

 

In sheetfed, the company had a brand-new Heidelberg, four pre-owned eight-colour Manroland, four more four-colour presses, two two-colour and two mono printing presses. In web offset, the company had machines from The Printers House, NBG Printographic Machinery and Rotta Print.

 

In all, the entire fleet of sheetfed offset presses could produce six lakh impressions per day. It was 14 lakh impressions an hour for the web offset presses. The company had two heatset web offset printing presses as well.

 

In the pre-press set-up, Nova had three CTP systems.

 

The post-press department had the complete kit from Bobst die-cutter and folder-gluing machine, three-ply flute laminator, eight imported folding machines, four gathering machines, five stitching machines, ten perfect binding machines, two section sewing machines, 13 paper cutting machines, two creasing machines, six case-making machines, seven wiro spiral machines, and fully automatic exercise book machines, among others.

 

In redevelopment, the company had installed 1,500 KVA to fulfil emergency light requirement.

 

As mentioned earlier, the company was in expansion mode. It was planning to invest in a new eight-colour UV sheetfed printing press.