Heidelberg will market Soma CI wide web presses in India
Looks to consolidate its position in the flexo segment
Delegates at the Heidelberg Conference
Buoyed by its success in the narrow web segment with its Gallus label presses, Heidelberg India is aiming for a larger role in what is perceived as an upcoming flexo boom in the country. It has done its homework and has worked out the figures. It has also identified the right product for the Indian market. Last Thursday, it made a formal announcement of its tie up with Soma Engineering, the Czech manufacturer of wide web UV flexo CI presses and other converting equipment for marketing in India.
The occasion was a seminar organised by Heidelberg and titled ``New Print Solutions for Flexible Packaging`` at the Hotel JW Marriott with around 100 attendees that included printers, converters, processors, industry suppliers and opinion makers including the media. Guenther Keppler, General Manager- Business Development, who has recently been posted to India and expects to spend his entire life in this country that he has fallen in love with, had some interesting figures on the size of the market and the underlying opportunities. According to him the Indian packaging industry was between 3.8- 4.2 billion euros and would be double that at around 8 billion euros by 2010 rowing at a rate of 18%. The flexible packaging would be three times the present 0.5-0.6 billion euros during the same period and almost 80% of this will be printed by flexo. The estimated cost of flexible packaging printed by flexo would be 1.25 billion euros in the next five years and wherein lay a huge opportunity. He buttressed the figures by charting the growth in the Cosmetics, Beverage, Food and Pharma industries and the percentage of spend in packaging by individual product heads. He spoke of the drivers
and driving factors for growth in the flexible packaging usage and the success factors for flexography printing. ``With the use of CtP technology and UV curing inks, with flexo printing you may get quality as good as gravure,`` said Keppler. He went on to compare the printing costs between rotogravure, flexo with solvent based inks and UV flexo to
drive home the growing advantage of the last option especially in context of shorter runs.
Sudhir Samant, Business Manager (Flexo) of Heidelberg India was bullish about the new products in its stable and looked to leverage its expertise in the narrow web flexo printing to synergise with the desire of its existing customers to expand into wide web applications. ``With the new products, we can be a one source supplier for many of our
customers who are looking to expand or diversify and have faith in our service and support network,`` said Samant.
V Faber spoke about the Central Impression Flexo technology and its advantages while describing the entire range of products that will be available to the Indian converters with the Soma-Heidelberg partnership.
Soma Engineering is a Czech company located at Lanskron, 200 km east of Prague. It manufactures CI flexo presses as well as associated equipment such as mounter proofers, laminators, slitter/ rewinders, die-cutters and sheeters. Though the company`s history goes back many years, it has been involved in printing and converting equipment since 1992 only. It is currently one of the handful of wide web press manufacturer globally to offer UV flexo CI presses.
The company`s flexo presses can be used with both UV or solvent based inks, have a speed of 300m/min, CNC deck positioning, CNC register setting, a central drum thermal stabilisation (CDTS), sleeved anilox and print cylinders, a dynamic doctor blade chamber and cantilever roll changeover from side . Gearless servo drives, automatic wash up system, web cleaners and nonstop unwind and rewind are offered as options.
Wrapping up the evening, Prof. A A Joshi of the Indian Institute of Packaging called the offerings from Heidelberg as very timely in context of the growing importance of flexo in the Indian converting scene.
