“I was impressed with the machine’s performance at PrintPack India held at Greater Noida last year, and had decided to invest in the machine. It took me few more months to do that as I wanted to be absolutely certain and wanted to see the machine at work at other places,” Singh said.  

He said he found the speed of the machine to be good and power consumption to be less. “The kit is equipped with auto plate changer and it is easy to operate. This has reduced the makeready time by 50%,” he added. “Our production has now increased two-fold. We can run the press at the speed of 13,000 impressions an hour, whereas in the old machines we could run around six to seven thousand impressions an hour.”

Singh started his journey from a design studio in 1980 and entered the printing industry in 1996 with a single-colour Dominant 19x26 printing press. “I worked in a designing house. Slowly, I started taking printing orders and then when the time came, I opted for a machine,” he said.

Talking about designing, he said, “These days, hand-drawn designing has reduced and machine and software driven advertisements have increased.”

Currently, Aakar has three sheetfed printing presses – a six-colour and a four-colour Heidelberg of 19x26-inch and a four-colour Komori Enthrone with 20x30-inch. The pre-press department is equipped with a violet CTP from Fujifilm, which produces 150 plates per day.

“Now, we are planning to invest in the finishing segment. Right now, we have die-punching, creasing, folding and cutting machines. We will buy automatic equipment for better finish. We will invest in perfect binding, folding and binding section,” said Singh.

The company converts around 200 tonnes of paper per month and prints magazines, stickers, labels, calendars and books. “Now we are focusing on book printing and will enhance our facility to meet our book printing demands,” he said, adding, “We have enough printing capacity; all we need is marketing to attract more customers.”

Presently, the company operates from a 450-sq/m rented premise and owns a fully constructed 450-sq/m factory in Rai Industrial Area. “If government pushes us, we will move to our own place,” he said, “Our immediate focus is to maintain our existing set up running and project on book printing.”

According to Singh, competition is stiff. “We heard about a new press every day. The industry is full of struggle and labour. No one appreciates your work and you are not forgiven if you make even a single mistake,” he said, “But I believe opportunities are there and continuous investment in new equipment and technology, and development are the keys for success.”