Janus Packaging: focusing on value-add

Munish Aggarwal, executive director at Janus Packaging states, “The motto of Janus is ‘value creation’—not only for its customers, but also for its employees, and everyone involved in the service chain.” His focus for creating a value-adding organisation has earned Janus Packaging the title of being the first Indian UGRA certified company.

Janus started its operations in 1999, after Aggarwal procured a single-colour press and bought a small industrial plot in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh. “Soon, we started working out how we could afford the more expensive presses, buy more land, and construct a factory,” he said.

Recently, the company had installed a Heidelberg CD 102 press and a Polar Cutting machine at the unit. Asked why he opted for Heidelberg, he said, “We have seen Heidelberg press working for the last four years. Heidelberg machines are very stable and reliable. Heidelberg’s after sales service is very strong, well planned and well placed. This fact facilitated our decision to go for Speedmaster CD 102.”

“The Speedmaster CD 102 comes equipped with the Preset Plus Feeder, which helps Janus achieve uninterrupted production even across a wide variety of substrates. The Alcolor inking and dampening system with Vario function ensures excellent colour quality, time and again. Prinect Press Center Compact, with the Intellistart process-oriented operator guidance system,” he added.

Besides the two Heidelberg presses, Janus also has a Polar Cutting machine, which was bought in 2009. According to him, after sales service is the key factor while considering purchase of equipments. “You can buy a great machine, but if you don’t get the right after sales service to support it, then it is not worth your investment,” he explained.

Janus primarily caters to pharmaceutical, perfume and FMCG industries in India. Besides packaging, Janus also offers commercial printing services to its customers, covering magazines, catalogues, brochures, greeting cards, posters, paper bags and so on. “Perhaps it is the fact that we understand packaging very well. We don’t compare our quality with any other printer, but we can say that we manufacture aesthetically beautiful cartons. In that sense, our work is of good quality,” Aggarwal said.

It was not an easy route from mono to six colour printing press because it required him to rethink of the entire business. Recalling that period, Aggarwal said, “For the first couple of years, our entire system took a hit. Our whole business was based on single-colour, and all our customers were from that segment.”

But with the dedication and effort of the entire team, Janus pulled through the rough patch, and went on to become India’s first UGRA certified company, and today, is capable of printing according to ISO 12647-2 standards.

Aggarwal feels that as a result of the impact of the global printing industry on the Indian market, printers in India will soon have to abandon conventional ways of working and adopt a more professional approach. Printers following traditional methods of working will face problems in the years to come, unless they are willing to move forward.

Offering a word of caution to the printers he said, “Printers should avoid commoditisation of their products. Big companies know how to pressurize them into reducing their prices, and usually succeed. Just on the basis of volume, or worrying that their machines will not be in production, they agree to reduce their prices and then end up reducing them more and more. But printers caught in this trap will not survive. To address this effectively, printers should work out their costings well, and refuse to sell the product below the right price. This is better than working at a loss and causing wear and tear to the machine too.”