Bobst open house: Commercial printers’ introduction to packaging

For the commercial printers who are looking to branch out into the potentially lucrative package printing business, Bobst’s open house, on 22 April 2016, offered a ringside view of the packaging landscape with special guidance from Ramesh Kejriwal of Parksons Packaging and packaging buyers from Marico, Mondelez, and Nivea., Business

25 Apr 2016 | By Rushikesh Aravkar

Building upon the experience of Parksons as one of the first few commercial printers taking a plunge into packaging in the early nineties, Kejriwal presented general differences between commercial printing and packaging printing and what synergies and opportunities commercial printers already may have in this space.
 
Kejriwal said, “Converting is the most neglected aspect of packaging. With a commercial printing background, the thrust is so much on quality printing that converting is neglected. One must keep in mind that the cartons that we produce are meant to be erected and packed on high-speed packing lines of the customer. Hence, the cutting and creasing have to be accurate.”
 
Kejriwal also shared an instance from his early days when they couldn’t find a good die in India and had to spend Rs 1.5 lakh for an imported die and with this spend the cartons could run at 30% higher speeds at client’s end.
 
He also touched upon the space and inventory needs of packaging. “There is no inventory required in commercial printing. But in packaging, there are a lot of processes involved after printing, so you will have WIP inventory after printing, after die-cutting; also a lot of finished goods inventory. And to accommodate all this you need a lot of space.”
 
“The Parksons philosophy is to have die-cutting capacity higher than printing capacity. So if there has to be a bottleneck, it should be in the printing section and never in the converting section.”
 
Concluding his talk, Kejriwal advised, “Create a niche for oneself. Target one kind of value addition and be a champion in the segment.”
 
Besides this, Soma Roy of Marico, Yogesh Bhambal of Mondelez, and Tarakeshwar Bhattacharya of Nivea India, shared their expectations from their packaging vendors and what drives innovation at their end.
 
Anoop Venugopal of Anaswara Offset said, "We are already printing carton jobs but outsource the converting operations. We want to bring converting in-house so that the turnaround times are upped and quality is consistent. Having said that, commercial printing will always remain our core business."
 
The full-day open house at Bobst’s Pirangut manufacturing unit in Pune saw more than 18 print firms experience live demonstrations of Bobst Novacut, Bobst Expertfold, and Esko Software Platform.