Jaichandra, director, Veepee Graphic Solutions, said the best part of the show was that it has focused visitors. “People who came to our stall knew about polymer plates, and we did not really need to introduce our products,” he said.

He said while Veepee was the first in the market to introduce pre-mounted plates for corrugation market four years back, at the time, people didn’t accept the concept. “However, for the last one year, we have been observing a change and seeing more and more people opting for it,” Jaichandra said. “Even earlier, people knew that it is beneficial but did not want to adapt it. Now we have observed a change of approach.”

This is because, Jaichandra explained, as converters started doing more four-colour, half-tone and half-graphic jobs, they realised that manual pasting is not going to work. 

He showed a sample and said explains that there are two ways to do it — either you print it on web and paste along with corrugated sheet or you print directly on corrugated board. The sample was printed on corrugated sheets.

He said as of now the demand for pre-mounted plate is around 10%, but people are showing more interest on it. “Pre-mounted plates can help ease the operation as the converter can now shut down their entire pasting department. It also results in better accuracy,” he added.

He said the company charges 10% more for pre-mounted plates. We charge a premium for whatever we do and that’s why many people don’t come to us. It is very price-sensitive market,” he explained. “In pre-mounted plates, corrugators have savings on plates as well. Price advantage is around 15% to 20% in their plate cost. We also do the bevel cut for the plates. By this you don’t have problem of the edge printing and we cut the plates on an angle of 45 degree on all the four sides.”

Meanwhile, Jaichandra said the Veepee app the company launched earlier this year is functioning well. “The number of users is less but they are happy,” he concluded.