Harish Jain of Nova Publication and Printers, a sister concern of Jalandhar-based Evergreen Publications, told PrintWeek India on 2 May 2016 that the fire brigade authorities are yet to hand over the gutted site to the company. Once the company gets back the site, it will demolish the existing structure and rebuild the facility.

Meanwhile, as a stopgap arrangement, the company has rented a 40,000 sq/ft space not far from the existing site. Jain said this facility would go operational in a month’s time. “We will begin our production with an India-made web offset press from Faridabad-based Rotta Print,” he said. This, however, does not mean that the company has left its customers in the lurch. Jain said despite the setback, Nova is doing its best to keep its promises to its clients. “Currently, we are printing all our jobs in our Jalandhar plant,” he said.

Jain said the fire has sent the company back to five years in terms of growth, adding, “We have lost everything we gained in the last three years.”

The fire at Nova’s 2.5-acre facility
According to eyewitnesses, the fire was so severe (due to the availability of combustible material within the facility) and it spread so quickly that by the time fire fighters reached the site, the blaze had engulfed the 2.5-acre facility completely. By the end of it, even the concrete building had turned to rubble.

A short circuit caused the fire at the packaging and commercial print production firm at around 3:45 am on 10 April. The workers present on the floor immediately tried to douse the fire, but due to the presence of paper and chemicals, the blaze soon went out of control. More than 100 water tankers were put into service and it took the fire brigade more than five hours to gain control of the situation.

An ISO-9001:2008, ISO-14001:2007, OHSAS-2008, FSC, SMETA/Prelims and BSCI social audit accredited company, Nova prints educational books, mono cartons, packaging boxes, commercial jobs, stationery items and also manufactures corrugated boxes. Around 1,200 workers serve the company in two shifts.

Loss in the upwards of Rs 1 billion
Industry insiders told PrintWeek India that the total amount of loss after the fire could be in the upwards of Rs 1 billion.

Consider this. It was a full-fledged print production company catering to both commercial, book printing and packaging printing. The cost of the fleet of machines it had, from pre- to post-press would go to the upwards of Rs 100 crore. All of it was destroyed in the fire. In terms of business, Nova was doing well. Thus, the facility was well stocked with paper and paperboard, ink and chemicals, all of which are expensive. Then there is the loss of daily business, including the job orders that were lost in the fire, the job orders Nova would fail to deliver after the fire and the job orders it would have received. Overall, it is a huge loss for the company as well as for the market, not to mention the loss of livelihood for the 12,000-odd workers who would remain jobless until Nova gets back to its feet soon.

The plant that was
According to the information we have, the Nova plant had multiple printing presses.

In sheetfed, the company had a brand-new Heidelberg, four pre-owned eight-colour Manroland, four more four-colour presses, two two-colour and two mono printing presses. In web offset, the company had machines from The Printers House, NBG Printographic Machinery and Rotta Print.

In all, the entire fleet of sheetfed offset presses could produce six lakh impressions per day. It was 14 lakh impressions an hour for the web offset presses. The company had two heatset web offset printing presses as well.

In the pre-press set-up, Nova had three CTP systems.

The post-press department had the complete kit from Bobst die-cutter and folder-gluing machine, three-ply flute laminator, eight imported folding machines, four gathering machines, five stitching machines, ten perfect binding machines, two section sewing machines, 13 paper cutting machines, two creasing machines, six case-making machines, seven wiro spiral machines, and fully automatic exercise book machines, among others.