Anupam Gupta, president, Laghu Udyog Bharti, Saharanpur chapter, the key organiser of the event said, the organisation plans such events from time to time to help the members stay informed. “This time the event was for the corrugated box manufacturers to improve their product quality for export level, as there is an enormous scope for corrugation,” he said.

Surinder Jain, president, Himachal Pradesh Corrugated Box Manufacturer Association, said, “The time has come when we all corrugators have to think about innovative and attractive ideas for packaging design. Package is not only to protect the product; it is also used to attract the customer. There are challenges in each industry, but we have to come up with solutions.”

During his presentation, Dharmendra V Pandya, vice-president II, FCBM India, shared a case study about international norms, and how to pack products in corrugated boxes. He also spoke about how to achieve sustainable packaging for locally manufactured products. During his presentation he showed how canwood furniture packed into corrugated boxes can be sent to the global market.

Saharanpur is known for its wood furniture. Corrugated boxes can be helpful in increasing the reach of the wood furniture manufactured here, he said. He urged the Saharanpur industrialists to design the package as per the requirement of their products with minimum wastages of sources. He also spoke about various techniques to design an appropriate package, especially according to international standards.

Kanwardeep Sharma, executive officer packaging technology, Kurukshetra University said with changing lifestyles, India is growing in the area of packaging technologies. “Academic institutes are responsible for creating educated manpower and the industries are responsible for making the manpower skilled. Thus, Kurukshetra University and the corrugators can come together, work together and develop appropriate courses, and skilled manpower for the industry,” he said. He also shared technicalities and government norms for export packaging.

Rajiv Gulati, managing director, Packwell Containers, Yamuna Nagar, shared his practical experiences. He said there are pros and cons of manual, semi-automatic and fully automatic corrugation plants, and asked corrugators to choose wisely as per their requirements. “ the production rate is the key. So the demand for automatic machinery is growing in India. A fully automatic plant needs around two acres of land and at least Rs 6-crore of investment. Overseas, the packaging cost of a product is around 4-5% of the cost of the product. In India, it is around 1%. It has to increase. You need 600 tonnes of kraft conversion per month for an automatic plant. Moisture is the key in corrugation. We need to improve the quality,” he said. 

KP Singh, past-president, UPCBMA, said that cost-optimisation is a big concern for the packaging industry and the increasing prices of raw material affects the finished product. Nowadays, it is difficult to provide quality products at less price. He also elaborated on various technical solutions to get cost-optimisation in the present scenario.