At PlastIndia Delhi, Jan Willem Boers, founder and CEO of Polymount, spoke to Packaging South Asia about innovation and the company’s renewed push in India. PlastIndia 2026 marked Polymount’s debut in the show.
Boers said Polymount pioneered self-adhesive sleeves, as well as plate cleaners and film cleaners. “There were no self-adhesive sleeves. We started the self-adhesive sleeves. There were no plate cleaners. We started the plate cleaners. There were no film cleaners. We started the film cleaners.”
Boers founded Polymount in 2002, at a time when sustainability was not yet a mainstream term. “When I started the company, sustainability was a word that wasn’t used. We spoke about reusable at the time,” he said.
Globally, Boers estimates that around 20% of printing plates are currently mounted on self-adhesive sleeves, with the remaining 80% still relying on tape. “We don’t like that,” he remarked, outlining Polymount’s ambition to become the global market leader in plate mounting.
He believes this target is achievable. In the Netherlands and neighboring Belgium, around 80% of flexo tape usage has already been replaced by self-adhesive sleeves. “That’s probably the maximum potential,” he said, but added that globally the company should be able to push adoption above 40% in the coming years, effectively doubling the current penetration rate.
Polymount has a particularly strong presence in the carton-printing segment.
Turning to India, Boers described the market as highly promising. He observed a clear shift towards flexographic printing, which aligns with Polymount’s core business. He highlighted India’s growing awareness of reusability and environmental responsibility.
“India is very conscious of environmental issues, but also of reuse,” he said. He argued that traditional tape used in plate mounting is essentially a single-use polyethylene product that cannot be recycled, making it increasingly incompatible with sustainability goals. “Single-use waste, non-recyclable. That doesn’t fit the market.”
Polymount has already supplied sleeves in India and works with major converters. In addition to sleeves, the company has installed seven plate cleaners in India over the past two years and recently installed its first film cleaner in the country.
Reinforcing that commitment, Polymount is setting up a facility in Pune focused on recoating self-adhesive sleeves. If sleeves are damaged due to mechanical cuts or handling errors, they can be recoated locally instead of being shipped back to the Netherlands. This will reduce turnaround time to just two or three days, compared to significantly longer international logistics cycles.
The Pune facility, scheduled to begin operations in May, will include warehousing for consumables and demo machines for laser cleaning and plate cleaning. Customers will be able to visit with their own plates or sleeves, test cleaning performance and evaluate machine parameters.
