The STB meet was held at BMPA office in Worli, Mumbai on 12 March 2014.

The first half of the forum deliberated on the innovations of digital printing. Ajay Raorane of HP India provided the STB members with an insight of how the digital printing is conquering the worldwide markets to help the brand owners sell more and grow their businesses and how various campaigns are being designed with the help of digital printing.

“The way of presenting the products at the retail outlets is changing. Everybody wants to sell their products and through the use of digital printing every product can be different and hence can be marketed differently,” said Raorane.

Customisation is the key in the current packaging scenario. As an example of this, Raorane highlighted the Coca Cola’s advertisement campaigns in Australia. “In 2011, Coke used digital printing on labels to promote its brand in a mature market like Australia where the brand witnessed the lowest sales. Each label was customised to a person’s name that was put to a vote.” The company achieved 7% increase in young adult consumption, 5% more people were drinking Coke and sales transaction grew by 3%, according to Raorane.

Coca Cola replicated this campaign in Europe last year in May 2013 which was met with huge success for them. Record-breaking HP Indigo Digital Press productivity achieved to produce 800 million high-quality personalized labels in 32 countries“The most interesting part of the story is, 12 printers around Europe came together to execute the job,” said Raorane.

The other market campaigns to involve customised printing have been by Loreal, Sprite, Heineken etc.  

The second half of the forum saw Vinay Mehta, director at Ventit and Reproscan, present his journey from an ordinary packaging profession to becoming an iconic figure in the pizza box industry.

Vinay Mehta’s success as an entrepreneur developed on a road trip when he invented a today’s well-known pizza box, Ventit. He said, “I developed this box on mere frustration after receiving too many soggy pizzas home-delivered. The conventional box did not have the means of ventilation to push out the hot air inside the box.”

The Ventit box is a 3-ply corrugated box, having two flat surfaces and one ridged corrugated sheet in between. The vents in the form of holes are provided in the two flat surfaces, but not in the middle layer. “This solution permits steam to travel through the grooves in the middle corrugated layer, without getting trapped inside the box,” said Mehta.

Mehta has patented his pizza box innovation. He spoke about the process of obtaining a patent and leveraging it. He was recently honoured by a Guinness record holder and a pizza aficionado for his invention.