Steady growth for Karshak Art Printers
Hyderabad-based Karshak Art Printers expanded its operations in a new 15,000 sq/ft facility. The plant, which houses a pre-owned four-colour offset press and a two-colour perfector plus book finishing machines, was made live in April 2016. , Business
17 May 2016 | 3636 Views | By Rushikesh Aravkar
Karshak is a firm to watch out. A Jagan Mohan Reddy founded it in 1980. A self-made man, Reddy is engaged in the printing of books and bank stationery. His motto: “Make regular investments; fix the bottlenecks; plug the technology gaps; and chart on the growth path – because you can’t stand still in the business of printing.”
Reddy said, “The investment of Rs 8-crore in this new unit is to tap multi-colour book work for private publications.”
Therefore, at Karshak new investments are frequent. About seven years back, when Hyderabad was gaining a toehold in the textbook printing business, Karshak took the plunge into web offset printing with a single-colour Orient press and then in the next year, it invested in Orient 4i pneumatic fully loaded web press, a Newsweb 578 and a Prakash 508.
According to Reddy, the book business will continue to bring in revenue for the next five years, but the volumes are taking a toll. For the future, Reddy is eyeing the packaging and corrugation market. He has invested in a platen punching machine. “Packaging is a different ball game. The dynamics are completely different from book printing. The punching machine is the first step to experiment with the new trade. Automation will come once we gain confidence, which we surely will,” says Reddy.
Karshak Factfile
Two single-colour 20x30-inch Daya presses
Two two-colour 18x23-inch Komori perfectors
A two-colour 25x39-inch Miller perfector
A two-colour 28x40-inch Heidelberg press
Two four-colour 19x26-inch Komori L26 presses
A four-colour 22x32-inch Komori L32 press
A four-colour 28x40-inch Komori press
Three 578-cutoff and one 508 cutoff web presses