With consumer lifestyles changing across the country and a huge section of society getting inclined toward buying packaged goods, the packaging and printing industry is witnessing a tremendous amount of growth - a pace that experts say will be sustained for many years to come

Just before his untimely demise, Harshwardhan Gupta, an innovator always brimming with ideas, was at his excited best. After visiting many companies making fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs), the mechanical engineering graduate from IIT Bombay with 70 major design-to-prototype-proving projects and sustained hands-on experience of design, detailing, assembly and troubleshooting, had designed, prototyped and patented a unique machine to solve a major bottleneck witnessed across all such manufacturing units. With a working model installed at his plant in Pune, Gupta had said that his invention was the first-of-its-kind economical automated solution with the capability of packing large quantities of soaps, shampoos, biscuit packets, oil tins or any such product at the rate of about 500 (or more or less) per minute into ordinary cartons that are used for delivery.

"All large-volume FMCG goods are typically manufactured on completely automated and high-speed lines. However, the finished and packaged products are put into shipping cases (usually corrugated cartons) by hand. This last process has always been a time-consuming and laborious task that depends on a large workforce. My machine solves that problem," Gupta had explained.

One does not know what the latest status of Gupta's invention is but the packaging industry in India is, with increasing regularity, becoming technologically advanced. And that is to expected considering that its annual turnover is predicted to touch USD 32 billion by 2025 from the present USD 24.6 billion, according to Union Minister for State for Commerce and Industry E M Sudarsana Natchiappan. In the world scenario, the total turnover of packaging industry is about USD 550 billion where the Indian share is about USD 24.6 billion per annum. "The annual growth rate of this sector is about 15 per cent per annum," Natchiappan said recently. As per a McKinsey India report, there will be 10 times' increase of middle-class population by 2025 in India which will further trigger the consumption of packaging material and thus, the packaging industry will grow further.

In fact, the scope of the packaging industry in India is also attracting the attention of the MNCs in a big way. Recently, Sidel, a leading global provider of poly ethylene terephthalate (PET) solutions for liquid packaging, announced that it aims to increase its share in the Indian beverage packaging market to 50 per cent from the existing 33 per cent in the next three years. The French firm, which has a manufacturing facility at Pune and which supplies its products to companies like Bisleri and Coca Cola, is also looking at increasing its headcount in the country to 200 in the next five years from 120. "I believe that the overall market will double in India over the next four years. Our target is to capture a major chunk of this growth. In particular, we are interested in manufacturing blowing machines," says Sidel India Managing Director Laurent Fournier.

Such waves of expansion are being witnessed across India. In September, Cogent Glass inaugurated its Rs 200-crore new manufacturing plant in Telangana's Mahabubnagar district, which will significantly ramp up its production capacity. The facility has production capacity of one million pieces per day for Type I moulded vials and half million pieces for tubular containers, the pharmaceutical glass manufacturing firm said. The Hyderabad-headquartered glass company was acquired last year by Oaktree Capital Management, a Los Angeles-based investment firm managing over USD 80 billion in assets and several investments in the packaging sector. Currently, Telangana produces about 1.5 million glass vials for the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical packaging industry in India is estimated to be worth Rs 1,100 crore and is growing at a rate of 17 per cent.

In yet another recent deal, Finnish packaging major Huhtamaki has entered into an agreement to acquire Positive Packaging, known for producing packaging materials for brands like Bingo and Surf Excel, for a transaction valued at Rs 2,000 crore. The deal would provide the Espoo-headquartered company a major footprint in India. Positive Packaging, promoted by Enpee Group, has nine manufacturing facilities In India. "The transaction enhances our position in India and provides us with much improved access to the fast growing markets of Africa and Middle East. Many of our global customers are investing heavily to grow in these markets, and now we are even better resourced to help them grow," said Jukka Moisio, CEO of Huhtamaki Oyj, in a press release.

One of the fastest growing segments in the Indian consumer market is that of packed snacks and therefore companies are now focusing on developing special machines and technologies to cater to the requirements posed by this sector. One such is Coimbatore-based ABC Agro and Food Machine (India) which is actively engaged in manufacturing and exporting a wide range of agro and food processing machinery that can be applied for the processing and packing of snacks and food items such as murukku, wafers, namkeen snacks, poori, chapati, idli, etc. Similarly, Pune-based Nichrome, established in 1948, is known for its milk packaging machines. In the year 1977 Nichrome successfully designed and manufactured India's first pouch packing machine for milk. When the company turned 60, it repeated history by presenting India's first aseptic pouch packing system for long-life UHT milk.

A classic example of how the packaging industry in India has created impressive success stories is that of Vadodara-based Dynaflex, a 40-year-old company that once made polymer envelopes for collecting evidence from crime scenes and is now the country's largest supplier of packing material for e-commerce firms such as Flipkart, Myntra, Amazon and Fashion & You. Set up by Niranjan Vora, 75, in 1985, Dynaflex supplies recyclable polymer and bubble wrap secure envelopes that now pack everything from mobile phones and apparel to cosmetics and lingerie. "We now ship over a crore recyclable polymer envelopes for e-commerce firms that cost anywhere from Rs 3 to Rs 20, and have over 100 customers. We expect to touch Rs 100 crore sales within the next 18 months with a yearly growth rate of 40 per cent," Vora informs.

And just as growth in any particular sector has helped create industry hubs, it is Noida, which is emerging as the biggest host to the packaging sector players. One of the bigger companies here is Reliable Packaging, which has been experiencing a healthy growth of over 25 per cent per year. Yet another is Packman Packaging, which has been operational since 1995. In Noida one finds all kinds of packaging industries, including those engaged in rigid packaging, semi-rigid packaging and flexible packaging. Rigid packaging includes wooden boxes, metal boxes; semi-rigid packaging comprises carton boxes and plastic bottles; whereas flexible packaging includes paper, aluminium-foil, cellophane etc. According to a report, Noida supplies up to 30 per cent of the packaging products and there are about 500 units operating in the twin cities of Noida and Greater Noida.

Pune too has its share of big packaging entities. One such is Oystar Hassia India, which provides integrated packaging solutions with high accuracy and speed at every price budget. A wide range of vertical form, fill and seal (VFFS) bagging machines combined with different types of dosing systems (volumetric and weighmetric) offer solutions for packing salt, rice, sugar, spices, confectioneries as well as agrochemical products, detergent, and seeds. "The highly customised bagging machines are designed to respond to the fast changing market requirements of our customers," informs K Ravi, the company's managing director. Another is Nichrome, which made a splash at Interpack 2014 held at Dusseldorf, Germany where it showcased two of its modern, state-of-the-art technologies in horizontal FFS and VFFS multilane.

"Many interested buyers from Africa, Middle East, South America, Australia, Europe and Southeast Asia visited our booth and showed interest and appreciation. We are now ready to spread our wings across the seven continents with our right fit machines and other end-to-end packaging solutions," said Mrunal Joshi, Nichrome's executive director, in a press release. Nichrome, in fact, has a R&D centre which houses a complete engineering and design facility with hi-tech 3D modelling software, parametric design and product data management facility. The new facility also has a training centre for conducting customer training programs as well as a product and pouch testing laboratory.

Printing and Labeling

According to a research report, the Indian label industry is growing at a rate of more than 15 per cent with several press manufacturers and label converters gearing up to challenges. The industry has rapidly evolved and is global in its outlook and delivery. The larger Indian converters have been adopting the latest technologies and several high-end machines have been installed in the country in the past few years. These machines are largely imported from the western countries, with Germany and Italy accounting for almost 45 per cent of the total packaging machinery imports. However, as the need to upgrade is felt by the smaller converters and corrugators and many commercial printers diversify into package printing, there is an increasing focus on machines made in Taiwan, Korea and also China.

In terms of technological innovations, across the globe flexography has become the pre-dominant medium for package printing and several sophisticated CI flexo presses have been installed in the past six months. Says Sanjay Sabharwal of Noida-based UFLEX Ltd: "The printing and labelling sector is now growing at the same pace as the packaging industry because of the increasing demand for sophisticated products that can meet international benchmarks. This is also because of the entry of MNCs in India and the fact that Indian consumers are now very quality conscious. The appeal for any product lies in the packaging and the printing."

One of the biggest boosters to the printing and labelling sector has been the increasing use of automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) technology, which in several companies is integrated with the ERP/EDI applications. The AIDC industry includes barcodes, smart cards, RFID, biometrics and EAS. According to a survey, the barcode industry is around Rs 2.5 billion and is growing at over 30-35 per cent every year. The printers and scanners contribute equally to 50 per cent of this turnover while the consumables such as tags, labels and ribbons contribute up to 35 per cent and the services make for the balance. Some of the major international suppliers such as Symbol, PSC, Metrologic and Unitech for bar code scanners and Zebra, Intermec, Printronix, Sato, Toshiba and Datamax for barcode printers have their presence in India.

With technology dealing out a new hand every so often, the race is focused on installing the best of machinery to deliver quality that can match international standards. And manufacturers of printing machines are not far behind. For instance, digital press major HP Indigo has announced the launch of its 20000 and 30000 Digital Press aimed at the growing packaging industry across the globe. The first digital press would be launched next month in Japan, followed by a launch in the Indian market next year, According to Alon Bar-Shany, Vice President and General Manager, Digital Press Division, HP Indigo, "The packaging industry is the fastest growing industry at present since consumers prefer packed articles, particularly with brand value."

The emphasis no doubt is on speed, cost-efficiency and an attractive final output. Mumbai-based Acme Machinery, for example, exhibited its high-speed fingerless model corrugator machine at the IndiaCorr Expo 2014 held in Mumbai in October 2014. "The design of the machine is made keeping in mind the speed with quality output and at the same time checking on operator friendliness wherein an operator with minimal skill can also operate very easily and hassle free," a company spokesperson says. The fingerless model corrugator machine is a three ply to five ply corrugated board plant machine with a maximum speed of 120 metres per minute.

At the same show, Esko, the packaging and printing pre-media solutions provider, showcased the Kongsberg V series table in India for the first time. "The Kongsberg V is a cutting table that stands for value, durability, reliability, precision and ease of use at an attractive investment level. The Kongsberg V cutters come in standard configurations for sample making, signage and display production," informs Pradeep Ram, the marketing manager of Esko India. The V series' sign and display features the same tool set as the packaging version, with the addition of a 1 kW routing spindle and an iCut camera for reading the registration marks - perfect for a wide range of sign and display materials including acrylics and other synthetics.

As such, all this excitement about growth and technology will come to a head at the PrintPack India 2015 show to be held at the India Expo Centre, Greater Noida from February 11 to 15. Speaking to Print Week India, C P Paul of the Indian Printing Packaging and Allied Machinery Manufacturers' Association said, "In spite of a tough period the Indian manufacturing industry has been continually developing and adding new product categories which are cost-effective and relevant for the printer. Considering the fact that the Indian web offset manufacturers in particular are, perhaps, the best in the world right now, we are hosting a Web Offset Conference during PrintPack."