Godfrey Philips’ Esko investment quickens innovation

The head of Ipac, Sachin Sharma, said, “The whole focus is on expediting artwork development, prototyping and to work on completely new designs for products. This will improve consumer’s perception of the GPI brands. And with the statutory and legal requirements and the framework we need to comply with, it becomes more important for an organisation to have its own in-house facility. Ipac will help improve the packaging design and performance of not only our pan-India operations but even the international businesses of GPI.”

Sharad Aggarwal, executive vice president of operations of Godfrey Philips India, said that the requirement of Ipac was felt for a long time because working through various other agencies can make the process of designing new or existing packaging a bit tedious and sometimes slow.

With this objective, Ipac has invested in Esko’s workflows and software solutions for its packaging development and design operations. These include Esko’s ArtiosCAD, Studio Toolkit, Visualizer, and Cape software.

The structural designs for new and existing packs are created in ArtiosCAD whereas the Studio Toolkit creates complete 3D packaging in software. This means, the product can be further tested in a virtual 3D environment such as a shop or supermarket.

“We wanted to cut down on time and experiment with a lot of new materials as well as reduce costs. This is a significant investment from our side and although we are at a nascent stage, we really hope to gain a lot in the long term,” added Aggarwal.

According to Esko, the Studio Visualizer software can be used to visualise a large variety of print effects and design styles and materials even before the product goes to the conversion stage.

Sharma said, “Esko’s ArtiosCAD is one such software which has helped us in developing keyline designs (KLD), proper artwork as well as 3D modelling for virtual and physical mock-ups. The Studio Toolkit and the Visualizer are helping us significantly in reducing the time from the development to the prototype stage.”