L-R Rahul Chitkara CFO, Neeraj Dargan managing director and Peter Rego director Business Development Manroland Sheetfed India Photo Manroland Sheetfed India
The Manroland Sheetfed India team has added Peter Rego as director of Business Development and Rahul Chitkara as its new CFO. Manroland Sheetfed headquartered in New Delhi has been run for the last several years in the country by its managing director Neeraj Dargan. As the company observes the bouyant growth of the Indian carton packaging industry, it is gearing up for the anticipated upsurge in the purchase of new multicolor sheetfed offset presses configured for packaging and also commercial printing in the coming year.
Speaking of the addition of Peter Rego who recently retired from Heidelberg India, after putting in 25 years there as its main offset press sales person, Dargan said, “With his vast experience and knowledge of the sheetfed print Industry spanning more than two decades and a total work experience in capital goods and services of more than four decades, we are confident that Peter Rego will do a great job for Manroland Sheetfed India.”
Rego himself is confident that the revival in the economy and the packaging and even the commercial print industry are just round the corner. He will continue to work from Mumbai and says the market will bounce back in the coming months. He says, “Packaging will once again see an exponential growth. Also along with packaging which is the flavor of the season, with the education system slowly coming back to normalcy and students returning to the classroom, commercial printing and book publishing will see better days within the next few months as well.”
Rahul Chitkara who becomes Manroland Sheetfed’s new chief financial officer is a qualified management graduate with more than a decade’s experience with international business and Manroland Sheetfed India’s operations. Dargan notes that, “With his diversified knowledge Rahul adds immense value to support the company and its customer base.”
Manroland Sheetfed has been growing steadily and has shown good results in the past few years and its new state-of-the-art R700 Evolution press already rolled out globally. Simultaneously, Manroland Sheetfed India is raising its visibility and customer centric operations with better and more efficient after sales service. The company is gearing up to to again spread its wings in the Indian market where it has traditionally enjoyed a strong footprint especially in the packaging market and the first brand new VLF presses sold into the country.
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.
