PrintWeek Awards 2023: CDC Printers wins Book Education Company of the Year

What makes Kolkata’s CDC Printers a clear winner in the category? The short answer is: CDC has managed to address the high-value, high-quality European market for book print exports while having a strong foothold in the local and African markets. One can also attribute the success to the Choudhury family’s confidence that book printing is still a growing market.

30 Oct 2023 | By PrintWeek Team

CDC Printers wins Book Education Company of the Year

In the last 20 years, CDC has helped 2,200 customers across 36 countries in five continents achieve defect-free quality of printed products on time. CDC’s on-time delivery performance for the last six months has been 95.3%.

CDC has its head office in Kolkata and a factory in Howrah. With 500 employees, the company’s size of operation is Rs 101- to 200-crore. In 2022, the company added 40% capacity in book printing using web-offset. In sheetfed-based book printing, it added 75% capacity.

As a result, CDC has emerged as one of the fastest-growing print companies in the country, growing at a rate of 30 to 40% year-on-year in the last five years. And more than 60% of this growth comes from its book printing division.

This growth story is built upon two fundamental pillars — the ability to quickly transform based on the changing market needs and innovation (print as well as process).

In an example of its ability to quickly transform, CDC, in 2018, realised that there may need to be more sustainable ways to limit itself to the unpredictable African market. So, it started exploring other markets in Europe and America. Soon, it received success with publishers from almost 15 countries in Europe and North and South American countries.

CDC believes that how fast one can pivot and realign the business models and processes to the current requirements sets a print company apart. And this is exactly what it has demonstrated in the last ten years. It changed ourselves in and out, from markets in Bangladesh to regional publishers, global publishers, Africa to developed countries.

According to the testimonial from the BMPA’s STB (Share-To-Benefit) Forum, CDC is good at simplifying critical problems. It uses ERP perfectly to ensure timely delivery and has a good match between the business model, sales and matching infrastructure created around it. It has accountability of people at every level, and all family members are aligned.

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