India’s first 50x80-inch flexo plate at Shilp’s PlastIndia stand

Speaking to WhatPackaging?, Gajanan Bhavsar, marketing director at Shilp Gravures, reminisces about the early days when four colleagues from Stovec joined hands to manufacture gravure cylinders through the chemical etching process in 1989.

Shilp Gravure was the first pre-press bureau in India to have installed an electro-mechanical gravure cylinder engraving set-up in 1993. Since then it has come a long way. Today, Shilp houses 18 engraving machines one laser kit.

Anticipating the shift in the market, Shilp Gravure ventured into flexo platemaking in 2008. 10 years down the line it owns India’s first Flexcel NX Wide 50x80 system. This investment was announced at Labelexpo Brussels last September.

Bhavsar informed that the machine was up and running at Shilp’s “ultra-modern dust-free” facility in January. Now it has already started supplying plates to its clients.

Bhavsar said, “The market and our customers demand higher levels of productivity and improved output. There is a realisation that flexo quality today rivals gravure, while also reducing the number of colours on press. With the Flexcel NX System and plates, Kodak has better technology on offer and also the capability of imaging a 50x80-inch flexo plate – a first for India. This enables us to efficiently make large-format plates.”