Nagpur-based Ashwini Printers & Packers is a leading packaging printing firm in the city and offers complete printing solutions having robust resources at their disposal – prepress, press and postpress under one roof. The company has become a one-stop shop because of the latest purchase of a Kodak Trendsetter CtP system which was installed in May this year. Up until then, the prepress part was being outsourced to a third party.
The company was founded by Anant Thombre three decades ago and during these years it has progressed from being just an offset printing outlet to being an advanced packaging printing solutions provider. With their base in Nagpur, Ashwini not only meets the demands of customers in and around the city but also services clients in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
The firm caters to various applications in food including sweets and bakery, seeds, pesticides and chemicals, cosmetics, pharma, incense sticks, to name a few. Although90% of the business is geared to packaging printing such as multicolor cardboard boxes, corrugated boxes, eFlute boxes, and more, some occasional commercial printing jobs are also done by the company.
Quality infrastructure
Ashwini has a wide range of equipment. The company employs three offset printing machines – two Heidelberg 4-color presses and one large size 38 x 50 inches Mitshubishi Daiya with UV attachment for MET PET jobs. There are also a range of punching machines, lamination machines, as well as automatic carton folding and gluing machines. “We believe in having a high quality set up and that is the reason we got the Kodak CtP system. The prepress work was being outsourced but logistics of all this was not working out as we are on the outskirts of the city. We needed to plant wodays in advance. This was consuming a lot of time and so we decided to get the prepress in-house,” says Abhijeet Thombre, son of Anant Thombre. “The installation of an in-house platemaking operation has given us complete control over the prepress operation, allowing Ashwini to produce quality jobs much quickly.”
The father-son duo did a thorough research before buying the Kodak system. They visited old Kodak customers and also consulted their peers in the industry. Also, the fact that there were somany Kodak CtP systems being installed in the country, gave them the confidence to go ahead with the purchase.
“The machine quality is superb. It is very advanced as per our present press needs. Kodak’s SQUAREspot imaging technology gives us more accuracy and stability in imaging, and this is beneficial to the printing process. The output speed is great too. Kodak Prinergy Workflow is intuitive and easy-to-use. Kodak has many successful installations across India and this was an important factor as well, since it helps us trust the Kodak brand,” says Abhijeet Thombre.
A new Heidelberg CD 102 in the pipeline
Although the market in the region in and around Nagpur is competitive, the duo feel, there is still a lot of room for growth in the packaging printing segment if you can offer quality value-added services.
“There are a lot of players in the market here hence a severe competition but demand for packaging is also growing. Firms which can provide unique solutions and add value will grow. And for that one needs to invest in technology. That is why we have decided to go in for a new Heidelberg CD 102 which we will buy before the end of the current financial year,” the father-son duo say.
