The cutting of red and white ribbons by Avery Dennison president - label and graphic materials, Georges Gravanis along with other Avery Dennison dignitaries marked the opening of ADIKC in Pune on 31 August 2017. There were more than 150 label converters and industry delegates at the event. 

 

  Team Avery Dennison (l-r): Bharadwaj, Milligan, Sharma, and Gravanis

The ceremony was followed by a walk-through of the facility that houses label printing, converting, and allied machinery from Avery Dennison’s partner companies like Gallus, Esko, DuPont, Royal Coat and HP among others. 

According to Anil Sharma, vice president and general manager, label and graphic materials, Avery Dennison, the ADIKC comprises of the Innovation Centre, which was set up in Pune in 2012, and the Knowledge Centre, an end-to-end education and training facility, which has been relocated from Bengaluru.    

 

Darren Milligan, senior marketing director at Avery Dennison, said, “The Innovation Center features a highly qualified and connected R&D team, with world class material science and analytical capability. Our investment to integrate these two centres into a single location will accelerate our product development and ability to deliver faster solutions to meet customers’ requirements.” 

 

Besides the existing set of equipment that has been relocated from Bengaluru facility, HP is the new addition to the set-up. The digital machine manufacturer will install an Indigo WS6600 at the facility in a few weeks. The other additions are a couple of wide-format printing machines for its graphic arts portfolio.

 

Speaking about the Innovation Centre that houses the R&D activities of the company, Milligan said, “There is a fantastic synergy now between a fully operational label converting facility which is primarily used for training. Now we can leverage it in terms of product benchmarking and product development under one roof. The Innovation Centre comprises of material science and analytics laboratories, which allows us to cover a broad spectrum of tests that will enable us to provide data-driven responses to our customer questions and we can do it very quickly. So now we are much more efficient in finding a solution as well as developing a new product for local needs.” 

 

Highlighting one of the product innovations that was designed and developed at the Pune centre, Bhardwaj, says, “One of the customer insights was a counterfeiting issue. In transit, the corrugated shippers were un-taped and counterfeit products were put in and the shippers were re-taped. This is a problem that many companies in India have to deal with. This R&D facility created a tamper-evident product on which when a tape is applied it changes colour. This is an anti-counterfeiting innovation developed by this centre in response to the challenges faced by the Indian end-users.”

 

Bharadwaj appealed the label converters and end-users to share their pain points with Avery Dennison and leverage the infrastructure capabilities and human capital that can develop a solution for their challenges. 

 

“Businesses today are gearing up for tomorrow’s challenges,” said Sharma. “As a pioneer of change, we aim to lead our industry to innovate across the full spectrum of the business. The Avery Dennison Innovation and Knowledge Center marks our commitment to building the future together with our customers.”