The new investment will enable Parksons to produce high-quality, B2-format (20x30-inch format) applications allowing brand owners to communicate with end-users customers, provide a lean and agile supply chain, faster speed to the market, including on-pack messages. “You talk about customisation, providing better security features, and a direct to consumer connects. These are becoming very important for brand owners,” said Siddharth Kejriwal, director at Parksons Packaging.

Parksons is focussed on folding carton business, multi-locational, and predominantly offset-based operations. In 2017, the company set up two plants, one in Sri City, Chennai and the other in Guwahati, Assam. “I think in terms of geography, we are well covered, and our focus continues to be folding carton business,” said Ramesh Kejriwal, chairman at Parksons. “We have been studying the digital options, understanding the advantages and how it will complement our offset operations. We believe that offset will continue to remain as a mainstream technology, simply because of the sheer size of our packaging operation, where we convert 8,500 tonnes at our six plants.”

The HP Indigo 30000 ordered by Parksons is a seven-colour press, capable of printing on paperboards, metPET, synthetic material of 250-600 microns thickness. The 30000 will be equipped with two interchangeable coating units for aqueous and UV varnishes. The kit deploys HP’s one-shot technology, which enables perfect colour-to-colour registration and has an in-built spectrophotometer for easy colour management. “The HP technology will simplify the complexity of design handling, allow our customers to dip in and out of their short-run requirements, smart packaging support like greater track-and-trace and the ability to interact with their end-users,” said Siddharth Kejriwal.

HP Indigo presses are in high demand, particularly in the photo-album segment, but in the last year, the company has seen a healthy number of installations in the label segment in India. In fact, in the last six months, the HP 12000 HD press has seen six installations, which among other applications produces packaging products.

Alon Bar-Shany, vice president and general manager at HP Indigo, who was present with the HP India team during the finalisation of the deal at the Parksons headquarters, said, for many in India today, the printing market, in general, is seen like an old, mature industry, almost like a dinosaur. But for us, that’s not true. It's transforming, and the consumer demands are definitely changing. “Brands want quality and good price, they want faster on-time delivery, they want to be able to react much faster through various elements of customisation, and there’s a certain growing aspect of brand protection and security. With the HP Indigo presses, we are trying not to just providing printing technology itself, but work on an interim solution, which will enable everything from design, colour management, printing to finishing, and of course meeting the very high-quality standards of offset.”

Bar Shany added, “It’s a great honour and an emotional moment for us, to be partnering with a leader who has a strong reputation for quality, innovation, and good business. We have seen good success in the photo market segment, but recently we have seen some nice progress in the labels and packaging. I would say, until now we have dabbled in the folding carton segment with the 12000 HD press, but this 30000 installation will be our first entry in the folding cartons segment. Now, we have a partner who will be able to create world-class capabilities.”

A Appadurai, country manager for HP Indigo in India, added, “The HP Indigo 30000 will make a huge difference to large folding cartons converters by taking all the painful and complex short-run jobs and making it very efficient, more importantly freeing up offset capacity which was used for these jobs. This could be a great value.

Alon Bar Shany and Ramesh Kejriwal finalise the deal