At PrintPack 2017, manroland India highlighted its foray into the packaging printing segment. Also showcased at the manroland India stand were its diversified range of products including the ‘Made for India’ Cromoman 4×1 web offset press that has recently been installed at Namasthe Telangana and of which there are now three installations in the country. Novexx Solutions, under the manroland umbrella, showcased various print and apply solutions.
Engineering services, including the installation of additional press towers and reconfigurations and relocations of presses, are now a major part of the company’s activity. Retrofits and upgrades, such as inline density control, inline registration control, press consumables such as blankets, rollers and press chemistry, as well as print services for which the company has received good response now make up for a major part of the company’s activity worldwide.
Diversifying its range of products, manroland web systems has added a packaging line with an aim to set a new benchmark in webfed printing presses featuring the latest in automation and technology for the growing packaging and printing industry. The company now has plans to come up with hybrid configuration of presses with offset, flexo and gravure that they will offer to the market by the year 2018.
Sudeep Bhattacharjee, managing director, manroland India said, “The newspaper industry is going through a tough phase in the US and Europe. However, the Indian newspaper industry is still optimistic and we can hope for good growth in the next few years. The idea behind this diversification is to break down the dependency on just newspapers and to cater to the needs of the evergrowing packaging sector.”
The company has also extended its reach to book printers and publishers with its inline finishing and binding solutions for highvolume digital presses as shown at drupa. manroland web systems believes that its long-standing experience in highly automated offset printing will help its packaging industry converter clients to competitively meet the growing demands of brand owners and consumer product companies.
Converters are faced with evershorter print runs, increasing price pressure, the need for consistently high printing quality, reproducibility, just-in-time production, sustainability and an over-ruling machine intelligence through networking of processes and systems. “We have joined hands with Novexx Solutions to cater to the growing demand of the label market and focus mainly on service support to our customers in our web systems,” informed Bhattacharjee.
He further emphasized, “In India, we are the only manufacturers in the web offset segment to have a full-fledged office with a team of engineers who are trained in our factory at Augsburg, Germany. Our service support for both manroland and non-manroland equipment makes us stand apart from the other existing players in the industry.”
Commenting on the company’s recent activity and growth, Bhattacharjee said, “In 2016, we introduced Auto registration and Auto Cut off cameras for nonmanroland presses for the first time in India and have been able to meet our targets. After the two major installations in Times of India, we are looking at big growth due to the new business in consumables and expect growth of at least 10-15% compared to last year.”
