Konica Minolta consolidates its position as an environmentally sustainable organization

Wins the prestigious Grand Prix award at the inaugural Nikkei SDGs Management Grand Prix

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Konica Minolta consolidates its position as an environmentally-sustainable organization
Konica Minolta consolidates its position as an environmentally-sustainable organization

In keeping with its vision for a sustainable future, Konica Minolta ensures that its solutions are aimed at tackling deep-rooted problems that have a direct impact on society and the world at large. With this broad outlook, the company identifies pressing problems within its purview to implement ethical business practices that raise awareness and drive positive change at the grassroots level.

Each of Konica Minolta’s products and policies is designed to reduce energy consumption and paper wastage. The production process for its proprietary polymerised toner technology, Simitri HDE, reduces the carbon footprint and sulphurous/nitrous emissions and consumes minimal energy.

Konica Minolta also engages in Green Supplier Activities, linked to its Green Factory Activities. Under the initiative, environmental experts from Konica Minolta visit supplier production sites to evaluate existing setups and propose suggestions for improving processes/workflows, as well as outlining cost reduction benefits, investment rationale, etc. They also provide assistance to suppliers to implement the relevant measures, thus helping them simultaneously reduce both the environmental impact and their operating costs.

For such consistent efforts, Konica Minolta Inc. has recently received the prestigious Grand Prix award at the first Nikkei SDGs Management Grand Prix. The platform recognizes businesses that are actively addressing environmental, societal, and economic challenges, and taking this a step further by integrating SDGs in their corporate practices to enhance corporate values. The assessment was made based on the company’s responses to the Nikkei SDGs Management Survey with questionnaires in four categories, viz. SDGs strategy and economic value, social value, environmental value and governance. Konica Minolta was rated highly across all four categories after a comprehensive evaluation of the initiatives it has implemented at multiple levels.

In line with the latest achievement, the company is now working towards furthering its vision and efforts towards achieving the SDGs by creating new values and developing solutions in association with its customers in India. As an ethical and environmentally conscious organization, Konica Minolta India has been compliant with the norms and guidelines mandated under the ewaste (management) rules, 2016, by the Government of India. The brand has also initiated a collection drive to enable its production printing customers to achieve the same compliance with the rules pertaining to e-waste. To facilitate this, it is conducting a collection of empty toner bottles and used/defective spare parts from customers. The drive began on 15 January 2020, and is being carried out in all metro cities to create an avenue for customers to do their part for the larger mission to build a greener, more sustainable future.

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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