Borkar Packaging, one of the largest multi-location packaging solutions providers in India, has just opened its second state-of-the-art plant in Nalagarh, Himachal Pradesh. Mahan Hazarika reports
Borkar manufactures highquality monocartons, litholaminated fluted cartons and corrugated shipping cartons for FMCG, pharma, liquor, foods and beverage, household items, personal care and specialty products for well-known brands and companies. The company also exports finished cartons to Europe, North America, Africa, Australia and the Middle East.
With the addition of the second plant in Nalagarh, the company now has four plants in the country—one each in Goa and Daman in the West and two in Nalagarh in the North. Together, these plants convert around 4,000 tons of paper and paperboard monthly, while the two Nalagarh plants alone convert 2,500 to 2,700 tons of paperboard.
The main workhorses of Borkar’s four plants are highly configured manroland sheetfed 6- and 7-color offset presses with coaters and end of-line curing systems. Several of the presses also have interdeck and end-of-press UV curing systems for printing on metallized and other non-porous surfaces and rendering special effects. There is a full range of finishing and converting equipment including high technology foiling.
The new Nalagarh plant has Roland 700 7- and 6-color sheetfed offset presses with inline coaters. The Roland 7-color plus coater has been field retrofitted and upgraded to full UV with interdeck and end-of-press UV curing cartridges by manroland sheetfed India’s engineering team.
The older plant, located just 3 km away, has three manroland sheetfed presses—two Roland 700 6-color presses and one very large format Roland 900 6-color press all with inline coaters. These multicolor sheetfed presses can run up to 14,000 sheets an hour, according to Prakash Borkar, chairman of Borkar Group. He says, “These presses are great on improving color stability as well as reducing make-ready times, wastage and energy consumption.” Moreover, the Roland 900 is one of the fastest large-format multicolor sheetfed presses in the world.
In the past two years, Borkar has made significant investments in capacity and infrastructure building. The company invested in two Bobst Lila folder-gluers as well as two Century diecutters in 2015 and 2016, respectively. They also added a 7-color Roland 700 press with an inline foiler and double coater at the Goa plant last year. “Mass delivery with outstanding quality within the shortest turnaround time is our core competence. To live up to our standards, capacity building at appropriate time is quite necessary and we are geared up to do just that. We have plans for further investments in the future,” says Borkar.
He further shares, “We are the first company in India to buy a 6-color Roland 700 with inline coater, which was installed in Daman in 1995.” The company was also the first in India to invest in a new Bobst diecutter in 1996, as well as a Roland foil-stamping machine. The older Nalagarh plant houses a Steuer foil-stamping machine, which runs at speeds up to 12,000 sheets per hour, while the other three plants are powered by foil-stamping machines from Bobst. “We have the most number of foil-stamping machines in India—altogether four automatic foil-stamping machines—two at Nalagarh, one at Daman and one at Goa. The Steuer at Nalagarh is the only sheetfed rotary foil-stamping machine in the country.”
Borkar has a very strong engineering and maintenance team that is fully trained in manroland sheetfed’s Offenbach factory near Frankfurt. The company also relies on the manroland sheetfed Indian office for timely supply of spare parts and special support when needed.
Borkar Packaging fingerprints its presses and systems for color matching and standardization. Each of the four plants at Borkar has its own ink kitchen complete with spectrophotometers and IGT ink testers. Borkar adds, “Having our own in-house ink kitchens help us match color variation to a great degree of accuracy across different job batches.” The Nalagarh plant consumes about 3,000 kg of ink each month, according to the company’s chairman.
Corrugation – Suraksha acquisition
In February 2016, Borkar Packaging acquired Suraksha Packaging, with plants in Goa, Puducherry and Pune. Suraksha is one of the oldest and most reputed corrugated box manufacturers in India. The acquisition, according to Borkar, will not only create great synergy for Borkar Packaging to broaden its product offerings and add value to its customers’ requirements but also strengthen the company’s position as one of the largest packaging solutions providers in the country. Borkar was already manufacturing corrugated cartons on a large scale even before the acquisition.
