MacDermid hosts multi-city roadshows to establish a foothold in India

MacDermid's top brass including Melanie Galloway, senior vice president; Jesper Bringstrom, vice president for Asia Pacific; Ryan Vest, director of innovation; and Anthony Dalleore, general manager for Australia; along with Rahul Dwivedi, sales head South Asia cluster, toured the three cities along with representatives from its partner companies like Esko, Apex International, Tesa Tapes, IMS Global, Hamillroad, and Glunz and Jensen. 

The full-day roadshows saw the label and flexible packaging printers, corrugation converters, and pre-press trade-shops representatives in attendance.

While MacDermid Graphics Solutions has been present in the Indian market for a couple of decades with representation from a few local dealers, its impact on the Indian flexography market in terms of adoption of MacDermid plates has been nominal. However, with a renewed focus on the Asia Pacific market and the growth potential that it sees in India, MacDermid is keen to bring its bouquet of flexo plate offerings to the Indian flexography printing and corrugation industry.

According to Bringstrom, MacDermid’s market share in Asia Pacific is 5% and that in India is about 8-10%.

In order to enable this, MacDermid has appointed Rahul Dwivedi as its sales head for South Asia cluster. For MacDermid, the first fruits of success came at Labelexpo India in November 2018 when Hyderabad-based flexo pre-press bureau, Digiflex chose to partner with MacDermid for plates while buying a new Esko CDI Spark 5080 platesetter.

“The plan is to build on this success and demonstrate the quality of output that MacDermid plates are capable of producing,” said Dwivedi, while speaking to PrintWeek India.

Talking about the Macdermid’s approach to innovations in plate technology, Galloway, said, “The continuous R&D efforts are towards not only making the plates deliver higher quality but also to make it very convenient and easy-to-use for the customers. We were one of the first companies to introduce the flat-top dot technology. This technology was further evolved in the form of Lux in-the-plate (ITP), which has flat-top dot shape built right into the plate.”

Galloway also spoke about Macdermid’s latest Lux ITP Epic and Lux ITP Melo plates that were introduced in 2018.

“The ITP Epic plate is a capped plate with a micro-rough surface that aids in ink transfer. While using screening technologies, one needs a higher degree of pre-press skills and precise process control on the press. However, with the new capped plates Lux ITP Epic that has inherent flat-top dots not only provides print consistency but also delivers high solid ink density needed to produce the finest detail graphics on a flexible film,” added Galloway.

Digiflex will deploy Lux IPT Epic plates on its new Esko CDI Spark 5080. Muralidhar Nalli, director, Digiflex said, “The main challenge for any flexo printing applications or ink requirement is the ink transferability on the substrate. We have seen samples of labels produced using MacDermid plates and they are excellent. The key features of the plates are the unique micro-rough surface, a near 1:1 mask-to-plate reproduction. By using the bump curve, printers will be able to expand the available colour gamut and print even a small dot. We hope to work with MacDermid and provide plates that will give the customer the print results as approved by their clients.”

Melanie Galloway(c) felicitates Muralidhar Nalli(l) and Shyam Sunder(r) of Digiflex 

Talking about the plate offerings for the corrugation industry, Galloway said, “Addressing the issues associated with lower quality of paper grades used in corrugation and its impact on the print quality, we have introduced the Lux ITP Melo. This plate features a Shore A hardness value of 25, which helps in reducing board crush and improves ink transfer and holds the finest detail for challenging corrugated substrates. This photopolymer plate can be processed in a conventional solvent and is available in thicknesses of 2.84 – 6.35 mm (0.112– 0.250 in).”

MacDermid also specialises in liquid photopolymer technology with manufacturing operations for liquid technology in Australia. It has a strong market share in the rubber stamp market in India. According to Anthony Dalleore, general manager for Australia provided insights into the liquid photopolymer platemaking technology and explained how it is apt for corrugation printing in terms of quality and cost-effectiveness.

MacDermid Graphics Solutions' roadshow in Mumbai