Siegwerk sets off on strengthening local infrastructure

Plans on developing new blending center in Bangladesh

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Ashish Pradhan, director of Siegwerk Bangladesh Limited and CEO during the launch of Siegwerk blending machine launch in Bangladesh.

Siegwerk, one of the leading global suppliers of printing inks for packaging applications and labels, has announced plans for a new Blending Center in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The center is expected to start operation in the fourth quarter of 2019. With this expansion, the company will significantly strengthen its domestic business in the country while extending its position across the overall Asian region.

Siegwerk has been supplying inks to printers in Bangladesh since the mid-nineties. “We have established a very good customer base with sustainable growth in Bangladesh. We now want to get closer to our customers supporting them more effectively with individually formulated ink solutions which match their local printing requirements,” said Ashish Pradhan, director of Siegwerk Bangladesh Limited and chief executive officer – Siegwerk India.

Presently, inks are imported from Siegwerk’s plant in India. Going forward, the new center will blend solvent- and water-based inks, as well as UV and conventional offset inks directly in Bangladesh. “The new Blending Center will enable us to make our products and solutions even more accessible to local customers and enhance our service capabilities across the country, while strengthening our leadership position,” added Pradhan. Subsequently, the company will be able to reduce lead times and provide customers in Bangladesh with the highest global technology expertise directly in their own country.

As a global leader in product safety, the new center will be a toluene-free environment. This means, toluene, or any raw materials containing toluene, will not be used as ‘intentionally added’ ingredients at all. All produced inks will be compliant with global regulatory and brand owner requirements to ensure products are safe for the end-use packaging applications.

With its global production and service network, Siegwerk offers customers a consistently high level of quality worldwide. The basic colors and varnishes are therefore manufactured in a standardized process at 15 dedicated Siegwerk ‘Centers of Excellence’ around the world. The raw materials and intermediate products are as close to identical as possible, laying the foundations for consistent product quality. Blending centers in more than 30 national subsidiaries worldwide ensure that Siegwerk printing inks are subsequently tailored to meet individual customer’s requirements – in time and with the desired performance.

2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India

Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.

The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry. While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.

The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.

Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.

Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.

Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.

– Naresh Khanna

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