Aman Gulati of Galaxy Offset said, “The Heidelberg will enable us to print anything that can be printed through offset technology. We will be able to print extended colour gamut CMYK along with orange, violet and green. On the seven-colour machine, we can achieve white on MetPET, special colour and textured UV.”  

Gulati said the new press will help double the company’s conversion of boards (grey, white back and FBB) from 600 tonnes to 1,200 tonnes per month. Galaxy has invested around Rs 30 crore for new equipment and facility. “The construction of a new building and purchase of new machinery is a part of our expansion plan,” Gulati said. Around a month ago, the company shifted its corrugation plant to a 50,000 sq/ft constructed rented building. 

Now, the company is planning to invest in finishing equipment to convert the new press production. Galaxy has added F, G and N flutes to its existing corrugation facility where it manufacturers B and E flutes. The corrugation unit is equipped with Indian and Chinese equipment.

Vikas Gulati, responsible for production at Galaxy, said, “Now, we have knowledge and understanding of the segment. Now, we have expanded it too, along with our commercial and packaging set up. Our customers forced us to expand our corrugated unit to fulfill their current requirement. We would also be exploring new segments for it.”

Vikas Gulati also said that the company is looking forward to replace most of the Pantone colours with CMYK OVG combination. “This will not only produce stunning results for our customers but will also reduce our Pantone ink inventory, thus resulting in cost-effective solutions for customers. Almost 90% of our jobs are UV and we want to give more colour options to our customers. We would be using this system to offer a bigger colour gamut to our customers in terms of UV MetPET jobs by adding CMYK + white + matte and gloss UV effects,” he said.

The packaging arm at Galaxy has around 50 customers, out of which 40 are regular. “We do not cater to customers below 5,000 sheets. If we segregate our customers based on print run, then 30% are from 5,000 to 10,000 prints; 40% are from 10000 to 20,000. The rest are more than 25,000 prints. Our target is to tap top print buyers along with existing mid-range customers,” said Amit Gulati.

Galaxy now wants to expand its portfolio by adding new segments in its portfolio. “We will add pharma and other segments in our portfolio. Presently, we are catering to liquor, cosmetics, perfumes, spices, ghee and FMCG,” added Aman Gulati.

This is the third brand-new Heidelberg at Galaxy, acquired in the last decade. The company has total six equipment from the German manufacturer. “Heidelberg is a trusted partner. Heidelberg engineers have always rescued us whenever we were in fix, so there was no other option. The machines give us best printing quality and quick delivery because of fast turnaround time,” said Amit Gulati.

He added that following demonetisation, the company’s packaging business witnessed a dip of 15%. However, there was no impact of the decision on commercial printing. He believes that the impact of the decision will be short-term. “We have planned our investment in a way that there will be no extra burden on us regarding EMI. The new EMI will start once the EMI on our earlier investment comes to a close,” he added.

Along with the press, the company has also invested in a bundle of software. These include multicolour separation for better colour reproduction and software for power consumption reduction. “The dry star advance will help Galaxy restore the settings of earlier jobs and can be recalled at the time of next production. The new Heidelberg Speedmaster CD 102 is equipped with ELC, electronic lamp control UV. The total power requirement of Heidelberg CD 102 is more than 300 kva and running power load is around 220 kva.

Klaus Nielsen, managing director, Heidelberg India, said, “Galaxy is a valued customer of Heidelberg India. Galaxy’s significant move to add a new packaging press will surely motivate other printers to invest in new equipment for their expansion. I know the Gulati brothers for a decade. Like many other printers, Galaxy was evaluating opportunities for business expansion. This led to a successful foray into packaging-printing a few years back. The uniqueness of Galaxy’s current business model lies in the fact that despite the expansion into packaging, the company has maintained a very strong focus on commercial printing as well. They have successfully propagated their strengths; quality orientation and on-time delivery - from commercial operations into packaging operations.

On the back of very innovative Drupa, Heidelberg India has already exceeded its own expectations by selling more than 140 printing units this financial year.

In this financial year, Galaxy will be closing around Rs 85 crore and targeting Rs 150 crore in coming few years, from all three segments – commercial, packaging and corrugation.