The launch meet was organised at Hotel Leela in Mumbai with around 40 delegates from both buyer and converter segments attending the meet.

The national packaging exhibition is aimed at targeting the local manufacturers, claimed Shekar Ambekar, assistant director- administration and exhibition at IIP.

Speaking to PrintWeek India during the show where IIP's Hyderabad centre was present, Ambekar said “Our aim is to cover the entire country. We received requests from the northern region for the need of such an exhibition and hence it was Delhi decided as the venue. IndPack gives local manufacturers a platform to showcase their technology.”

Along with IndPack, IIP will also host a two-day national conference on Consumer Packaging - Challenges and Opportunity from 17-18 January 2014.

Director of the Indian Institute of Packaging, Professor NC Saha, in his welcome address said, “Packaging is the heart and soul of merchandising and the Indian packaging industry is growing at an average of 15% per annum”. He further added, the support has been extended by the Ministry of commerce and industries, Ministry of food processing Industries and the National meat and poultry food processing industry under the authority of Government of India.

Sanjay Kumar Chattopadhyay, Professor, IIP & Convener – National Conference gave a quick glimpse of the objectives of the conference and the brief of the topics in the technical sessions to be held concurrent with the event. Chattopadhyay mentioned, “We are trying to rope in experts from reputed industries and educational institutes to share their experiences.”

The theme of the event was elaborated by Sunil Jain, Chairman IndPack 2014, wherein he briefed the audience on the focus of the conference and the exhibition. According to Jain, the aim of the exhibition is to expose the packaging industry to masses as many people do not know the potential of the flexible packaging industry.

The chief guest for the launch meet, Pradeep tyle, CEO Uflex, elaborated the role of flexible packaging and its contribution to the Indian packaging sector. Emphasizing on the flexible packaging, he said” there was a company, mawana which had just launched a sugar and now probably there are around 27 companies showcasing their brands on the supermarket shelves, packaging sector boomed but the sugar is the same”.

Tyle further said, packaging is like clothing for men or women, it is a must for a product. There is tremendous potential in flexible packaging but the problem is we turn it into commodity. There are three pillars any company should follow according to tyle, quality, service and innovation.

He concluded his inspiring speech by stating, consumer packaging is an in-thing. Don’t think about cheapness, think about innovation. We have to project innovation as a centre.

Rakesh Shah, chairman IIP Delhi concluded the seminar by asserting that the event will be focused on a wide gamut of packaging medium and applications.