Duplo unveils alliance with TechNova in India

While speaking to PrintWeek India, Kiyoto Akashizawa, executive director of Duplo said, "It’s a fantastic opportunity, for Duplo to enter India through a business relationship with TechNova. This is quite important for Duplo. It’s the right time to take charge."

The Japanese finishing kit supplier, Duplo is a 60 year old company and has three manufacturing facilities in Japan. It has set up two plants in China in order to ensure lower pricing and focus on quality.

In India, the Duplo will focus on brand consistency and products like the booklet-making and collating system, saddle system, and production slitter-cutter-creasers systems; a mid volume perfect binder and a Duplo printing press.

"We believe TechNova's background and knowledge of the Indian market will take Duplo forward in today’s both the traditional offset and digital segment. We are impressed with TechNova's whole belief and focus on customers in the CTP sector which we feel will create a new era in the digital finishing. We are creating a penetrative price strategy for key products which we believe will cement our position as the best in the industry," said Akashizawa.

One good product for the India product is its slitter cutter and creaser range. This besides being JDF compliant has a barcode reader solution which as Akio Kaneko, supervisor, sales and marketing group for the group says is, "a Duplo invention."

The advantage is, it offers ‘lights out’ processing – and there’s no operator attending to it. It has a barcode reader that picks up the information from a printed sheet. It does four processes in one: trimming, creasing, folding and delivery under our packing instructions. That would normally take four people to do at different stages.

Kaneko says, this is possible because of "Duplo's barcode capability. A printer can place pre-determined barcodes outside the trim area. After it gets printed, it gets placed into the tray to accept the work. It scans that barcode and sets the machine up according to predetermined creases and folds and so on."

Another plus is the user interface on the PC. Kaneko says, "That is what makes it so easy, because you’re just following the bouncing ball. It is accurate to 0.1 (mm). You set it up for one sheet and it just keeps going to the last sheet. There’s no deviation to the trims. With this it does the same trim, same crease, same fold in the same position from first print to last print. It’s a remarkable machine."

The alliances were formally forged on 21 February at the TechNova headquarters. Duplo products will be available in the Indian market from March 2013.