Kolhapur-based Premier Printers, a leading player in the books and calendar printing business in Western and Southern Maharashtra, has chalked out a comprehensive strategy for its future growth. It has made some substantial investments in the last one year and has plans to foray into new areas of business. In addition to printing the very popular and big seller Shri Mahalaxmi calendar, Premier is engaged in publishing and printing international bestselling books translated into Marathi. Both the calendar printing and book printing operations are undertaken in a large 40,000 square foot unit located in a campus which is spread over 2.3 acres.
Expanding the book business
A fairly new entrant into the book publishing and printing business, Premier currently holds publishing rights for 25 international bestsellers in the fiction category. Out of the 25 titles, 16 titles have already been translated into Marathi and have been published in the last one year. Also, six titles in the astrology genre have also been published in the last 12 months.
“We have had some early success with titles like Proof of Heaven, Fault in Our Stars and Between Shades of Grey. We have printed more than 2,000 translated copies of these titles. However, it is still early days for us to fully gauge our success,” says Rohan Shirke of Premier Printers. The plan is now to expand into genres of spirituality and health. Premier also is looking to publish original books in English in the near future. “We have started with printing translated versions of international best sellers but would like to also start publishing and printing original English books,” Shirke adds.
There is an attempt by Premier to add value to the print quality of the book covers as well. The idea is not to get restricted in the realm of four colors. Shirke says book covers printed by Premier are not just in four colors but also have UV coating, spot coating, embossing and debossing. The print house has also invested in a Eurotecnica PUR perfect binder to offer lay flat books. To take care of the short-run book printing jobs it has bought a monochrome Konica Minolta bizhub Press 1052. “An important step we took was to recently install a monochrome digital press from Konica Minolta for shortrun book printing jobs. There have been instances when we had to print more books than required. With the digital press we can avoid such situations,” Shirke says.
The Eurotecnica PUR perfect binder and Konica Minolta digital press will add to the already large arsenal of equipment that Premier has. It boasts of a 6-color KBA Rapida 104 with UV coater, two Manugraph web offset presses which prints Shri Mahalaxmi calendars, Kodak Quantum Trendsetter thermal CtP, automatic case making machine, automatic section sewing machine from Aster, automatic folding machine, hot foil stamping Heidelberg cylinder and lamination machine.
Foray into packaging
Not only is Premier ambitious about its book publishing and printing business, it has plans to solidify its presence in the packaging printing space as well. The KBA Rapida was brought in more than a year ago keeping the packaging printing segment in mind. Premier has also invested in a Bobst foldergluer and Ijima diecutter. “As part of our diversification strategy we are now also focussing on the packaging printing segment. We are initially looking at variable data printing on pre-printed pharma cartons,” Shirke said.
