Ahmedabad’s Krishna Multiprint to invest in new Komori press with in-line coater

Krishna Multiprint is among the leading offset commercial printers in Ahmedabad with large scale operation underpinned by the best technology in the prepress, press and postpress departments. The company is now planning to add a new Komori 4-color press with in-line coater. Krishna Multiprint already owns multiple Komori offset presses.

“We regularly get jobs which require in-line coating so we are thinking it is time we get a press with in-line coater. We have not decided on the timeline but we plan to get it within a year or so,” says Sunilkumar Gadodia, chief executive officer of Krishna Multiprint.
The company operates with two Heidelberg presses, one Ryobi press and four Komori presses. The last Komori that it had installed was a couple of years ago—a Komori Lithrone A37 4-color press of the size 25 x 36 inch. This was the first Komori of this size in Gujarat when the company installed it in 2017.

“We are very happy with the Komori technology as you can see, we have multiple presses and plan to add another one soon. The after-sales service is very satisfactory and our relationship has been excellent. Now that Komori is directly dealing with customers, we hope the experience will continue to be good,” says Gadodia.

Talking about the benefits of going for a 25 x 36 inch size press, Gadodia argues that with a bigger size Krishna Multiprint has been able to increase the productivity, reduce power costs, cut labor costs and improve the quality of the print output.

In addition to the seven offset presses of various sizes, Krishna Multiprint has basysPrint CtCP and a Kodak CtP in its prepress section while it has plethora of machines in its postpress department including numerous cutting machines, perfect binding machines, folding machines, stitching machines, wiro binding machines, punching machines and lamination machines, among others.

Krishna Multiprint prints items such as books, calendars, visiting cards, pamphlets, posters, flyers, invitation cards and wedding cards, among many other items. The company also prints packaging cartons but it does not do the converting part of the process. Cartons is a very small part of the business, Gadodia shares.

Apart from serving customers in Gujarat, it caters to customers in the neighboring states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Move towards packaging?

There has been a trend in recent years of commercial printers diversifying into packaging printing. Since Krishna Multiprint is already printing cartons for other convertors, is the company planning to have a full-fledged packaging printing and converting unit in-house in the immediate future? Gadodia was a little ambiguous in answering that.
“Our commercial printing business is moving along pretty well. We do almost 200 jobs of various sizes every day. Yes, packaging is a fast growing area and many commercial printers have diversified into the segment. As for Krishna Multiprint moving into packaging printing and converting, we have not decided about it yet. At the same time, we cannot predict what the future holds,” he says.