…says Vimal Kedia, Managing Director, Manjushree Technopack, one of the leading player in the Indian plastic packaging industry. In this interview, he tracks the development in packaging space and trends propelling the demand for packaging. 

 

How has been the journey of Manjushree Technopack so far?

 

From spices to mixes, teas, coffees, oils, beverages, Manjushree Technopack caters to the packaging needs of all sorts of products. The company caters to 12 sectors including food and beverage, edible oil, alcobev, dairy, personal care, and home care, among others.  

Manjushree has worked with almost all top brands in India. Today, the company's clients, who number around 200, include Patanjali, Dabur, SC Johnson, Marico, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Reckitt-Benckiser, Mondelez, and many others. It also exports to 10 countries. The FMCG segment caters to the major share of our business and Coca-Cola’s being our biggest partner in the country - about 15% of its revenue comes from Coke. 

 

Being a packaging leader, Manjushree is constantly innovating and stays on par with current global trends in. In 2016, Manjushree diversified into shrink film packaging with a goal of providing a 360 degree packaging solutions. With the segment being driven by beverage players, it was a natural progression for Manjushree. 

 

What is driving the demand for Manjushree Technopack products?

 

Manjushree caters to the different segments of the industry, ie FMCG, pharma, liquor, dairy, etc and the demand from the all the segment is regular with the growth of the market. We also acquire new customers and business every year, which is an instrumental for company’s growth. Hence, we are not dependant on the current market factors or GDP.

 

How is the market of PET packaging in India? 

 

The market for PET packaging looks positive and a lot of opportunities are present. The Indian plastic industry is growing at 18% CAGR and is expected to reach $ 73 billion by 2020. At present, the Indian packaging industry is at $ 32 billion and constitutes only 4% of the global packaging industry providing a huge potential for growth. 

 

Beverage segment is a prominent driver for PET packaging and demand is the segment is 40% in India and 60% globally. This is followed by liquor at 10% and pharmaceuticals at 8% and other products.

 

What are key challenges before PET packaging industry in India?

 

One of the pain points for PET bottle and perform manufacturers in India comes from the stiff competition emerging from unorganised players existing in the market. Another crucial challenge is the lack of domestic technology for PET manufacturing. The plastic industry in India is very labour intensive compared to its western counter parts hence, causing it to be a high input cost industry. 

 

At present top industries that offer promising growth in the packaging industry are food, beverage and pharma. China and India offer growth opportunities due to expanding production activities in the countries. Although, China seemed to be a competition a couple of years ago, the PET market in India has grown exponentially over the years and is expected to reach of production of 10 million tonnes by the year 2020. The dawn of modern trade and supermarket culture, the perception towards packaging has changed and industries are keen to invest and custom make their packaging, in order to stand apart on the shelves. 

 

The packaging industry is constantly adapting to the changing needs of its consumers. The biggest challenge is to innovate and bring in quality technology. Understanding this from the start, we have always invested in technologies and innovations, and understood our customers' ideas. We have imported bottle-blowing machines from Japan, preform machines from Canada, film machines from Germany, and multi-layer technologies from Italy, so as to never compromise on quality. We engage and invest constantly in R&D to match the requirements of industries, and were maintaining top class service, quality and design.  

 

How is PET packaging industry handling sustainability issue? 

 

PET is more environment- friendly when compared to glass, aluminum and several plastics. It is known to produce less greenhouse gas emissions and its easily recyclable properties reduce the carbon footprint of plastic packaging.  Another benefit is that PET can be recycled more than once and can be turned into fibre, non-food bottles, etc.

 

The challenge is plastic mismanagement when speaking about sustainability. The government has come out with the Plastic Waste Management Rules, which specifies producers' responsibilities. But each and every citizen must be aware and take the responsibility of separating plastic from waste.  

 

Manjushree has always been a promoter of sustainability and has been actively engaged in promoting eco-friendly practices among consumers and the packaging industry as well. Manjushree has light weighted bottles for beverage and pharma segments. We are constantly looking to come up with designs through our design studio that are eco-friendly and, on how to reduce weight and plastic use. We have an in house recycling plant that recycles clean waste and contributes a substantial amount of PET bottles to KK waste management. 

 

What are the emerging trends in PET packaging?

 

At the global level, food packaging has been using some new labelling techniques that ensure freshness, product tracking, product branding and more importantly - longer shelf life. Globally, the beverage and food packaging industry is the world’s largest consumer of plastics. We have taken up lightweighting as one of the key procedures for all PET bottles including pharma bottles. It involves considerable weight reduction without hampering the strength, appearance or performance features of the PET bottle. The company has lightweighted the pharma bottles of 100 and 60 ml by 7-10% by using the above principle. One of the most popular trends in the pharma packaging currently is the ‘Child Resistant Closure Caps’ (CRC) caps. IML (In-mould labeling) is a fairly new concept for PET but is steadily becoming a popular choice especially in the FMCG industry for products like premium ice-creams, yogurt, cheese and butter. The new Cadbury Lickables product packaging is an example of the effectiveness of IML, where sticking a label conventionally would be challenging for the uniquely shaped container. 

 

We diversified into shrink film last year keeping with the trend. As the company is one of the largest PET preform manufacturers for leading beverage brands like Pepsi.co and Coca Cola, we saw it as a natural progression to venture into shrink film packaging. 

 

What are the prospects for PET packaging in India?

 

The outlook towards packaging has drastically changed from what it used to be in the last 10 years. It has become increasingly important for industries to invest in packaging, in order to align itself with supermarket merchandising formats. The packaging industry is constantly adapting to the changing needs of its consumers. Better research in this sector will help in path-breaking innovations both for domestic and international markets. PET, one of the most popular type of plastics, gained importance in the past few decades and is been 

widely used due to its safety and quality standards.

 

At present in India the concern for using plastic bottles has increased but experts are finding it hard to find an alternative for it. Use of glass which is an alternative for plastic not just incurs cost but also poses several health risks and physical challenges. Whereas, PET plastic, of which the packaged drinking bottles are made, is 100% recyclable. As per industry statistics, close to 500,000 tonnes of PET is recycled in India, every year. One metric tonne of PET bottles saves 1.2 metric tonne of fuel, 1.8 metric tonne of carbon emissions and 5.6 cubic meter of landfill space. Today PET containers are used globally for pharma packaging by international brands and companies. PET packaging is slowly gaining pace in India and has become one of the most popular choices for packaging of food around the world.

 

What are your growth plans for the company? 

 

We are planning to expand our rigid packaging space. Our focus is currently on adding more power efficient machines, IML technologies as well as EBM capabilities. We are currently exporting products to Middle East, Africa and other European market and we are looking at geographic expansion in order to get closer to our customers, we plan to open marketing offices in the Middle East & Africa by January 2018. We are expecting to close this year at Rs 850 crore at a growth of 30%. We are eyeing Rs 1,000 crore in turnover by 2019 and raw material processing of over 15,0000 MT per annum.

 

New products are regularly being designed and launched by us as per customers’ requirements and we also keep a track on the world-wide market to bring in any new technology which has been developed outside India and offer the same to our customers.