The new 1.25 lakh sqft plant, which is in its first phase of construction, will increase Concord’s capacity by more than 50% to over 300 tonnes of paper and paperboard conversion per month. “Right now we are part-operating the Halol plant, where we have the infrastructure for lamination and converting,” said Arshad Memon, director at Concord, and the younger among the two Memon brothers. Kayyum is the elder brother.

At the beginning of 2020, Concord had invested in a slew of corrugation machines, which included a Wenhong 1050 SF automatic die-cutting and hot foil stamping machine and an LC-740 automatic cornercutting and line pressing window patching machine. About 15% of Concord’s business is commercial printing, and the rest is packaging, of which 50% is mono cartons and 35% is corrugation packaging. In July 2021, the company boosted its carton operation with the addition of a new Bobst Expertfold 110 A2 with corrugation kit, which was installed at the new plant.

The company had already been running a Bobst Visionfold 110, which was installed in 2015 and a Bobst Novacut 106 in 2017 at the city plant. According to Memon, the company already had a Bobst Visionfold which enabled Concord to fulfil the increased demand for packaging, particularly in the food and pharma sectors, which began soon after Covid-19 pandemic struck. “Our packaging production grew by 40%, which means we were doing 40% more work than we normally did,” he said.

“We already had the Visionfold 110 folder-gluer with four -and six-corner attachments which have served us well. It gave us the ability to quickly and easily process the new kind of demands,” Memon added. However, Memon gave three key reasons for investing in the new Bobst Expertfold. “Whenever we find that there’s a bottleneck in our process, we think that’s the right time to add a new kit. That said, we do increase the existing hours on the existing machine, but if the bottleneck persists and is around 35% to 40%, opting for an additional machine is a good decision. That’s what we did.”

The second reason was the confidence in the Bobst brand. “We were not very comfortable with other brands, particularly when buying critical equipment like folder-gluers, hence we preferred Bobst. That said, we were comfortable buying Chinese brand Wenhong machines because we knew they were one of the best in corrugation applications,” said Memon. And the third was the timing – the worst times are the best times to invest in equipment. “There’s a fear of the future, and hence fear to invest, that means, the equipment becomes available for quick delivery.

Also, we believe, when the worst is over, the demand for products will double, and we need to be ready for the surge.” Started in 1968, Concord Printing Press is a secondgeneration print firm previously known as Pravin Printing Press and Concord Enterprise. Besides the converting machines, Concord is equipped with three presses – RMGT six-colour plus UV coater, a Heidelberg SM 74 four-colour, and a Roland 200 single-colour. A Kodak Trendsetter Q800 platesetter fires 160-200 Sonora plates per day.