Ahmedabad’s Canpac acquires Manisha’s folding carton biz

Explaining the unique acquisition to PrintWeek, Nilesh Todi, managing director at Canpac, said that Anirudh Khemka, partner at Manisha Creations, will discontinue its current operations, sell off the machines to the partners, dissolve the company and join the Canpac management, bringing all the packaging businesses Manisha has. In effect, Canpac is not bringing in any of the equipment Manisha possesses, but just the packaging businesses of Manisha.

Manisha Creations is a 14-year-old packager with over 40 customers and a topline business of Rs 50-crore in folding carton packaging in the Kolkata market. “This packaging business will now be a part of Canpac’s business,” informed Todi. The process of syncing the two entities has been completed with partial funding and partial equity. Khemka said, “We both are very excited to take this strong partnership ahead with maximising the market share in East India.”

According to Todi, it was not Manisha Creations, which drove the Canpac to Kolkata. “We were already putting up a plant in Kolkata. In the meanwhile, we met and talked about doing business together, and it clicked. That’s how it happened.” Todi added, “However, we decided that we would not want secondhand machine and old technology, since we had already ordered new generation equipment in both press and converting operations.”

Khemka brings with him his industry knowledge and regional expertise to Canpac’s Kolkata plant, which will be housed in a large 1.65-lakh sqft site. “We have space for four lines to producing carton packaging. At present, we will be running two lines, which will be up and running by January 2021,” said Todi. “With the first two lines, we can easily meet the demands of the present business which Manisha catered to. So in a way, I can say, we are completely booked from day one of our new operations.”

The Canpac plant in Ahmedabad

Canpac’s existing plant in Ahmedabad offers one-stop solutions to its customer with a range of mono-, micro-flute cartons, liner cartons, flexible packaging solutions, paper bags, and rigid boxes, whereas the Tirupur plant is equipped for mono cartons and shipper boxes.

Canpac serves some of its customers in the Eastern part from Ahmedabad. “We supply carton packaging to customers around the world from Ahmedabad. Now some of that business will be shipped from Kolkata. In a way, we will now have more logistic plus points and fewer transport challenges. Likewise, the customers coming over from Manisha to Canpac will be able to afford even better levels of innovation, quality and service,” explained Todi.

With the expansion and business acquisition, Canpac has set a revenue target of Rs 150-crore from the Kolkata plant in the next three years, and hopes to reach its goal of being a Rs 500-crore company too.