Davis-Standard has one of the widest umbrellas among global machinery builders. It makes machinery and technologies for extrusion including blown film lines, coating, and lamination – mainly aimed at food industry packaging applications. It also makes aseptic packaging lines supplied to market leaders in India as well as globally.
Davis-Standard was back at the PlastIndia exhibition in February at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi. “It’s been a while since we participated in any exhibition in Delhi and because of the unfortunate pandemic issue, it’s for the first time after 4 or 5 years that we are getting together. From that standpoint, it’s great to meet all our friends. We had a very good volume of very high-value customers coming to visit here or who have made appointments to meet us in their stalls. We feel it’s been a very successful event for us to participate in,” Sekaran Murugaiah, vice president of business development for Davis-Standard Asia Pacific stated to Packaging South Asia.
Davis-Standard acquired Maillefer about five years ago which is said to be a market leader in wire, cable, and cap solutions. Together with Davis-Standard, it supplies tubings and pipes for various applications – from standard irrigation pipes and household pipes to very specialized tubings for the medical industry for catheters, intravenous applications, saline, and blood delivery bags.
The company also has some key solutions for sustainability that it talked about at the show. “We are machinery builders and since no one stakeholder can work independently, we work with big resin suppliers such as Dow, ExxonMobil, and Sabic in testing their resins. There are a lot of newer resins coming in, nonfossil fuel resins which we use for testing in our laboratory and research center to design and configure the right type of extruders and equipment,” said Murugaiah.
There are resins called tree renewable resins made from vegetable-related green material and we do a lot of testing with them for the special design of equipment, he said. “We also work with some of the big Indian customers on a cleaner plan, how to convert them, and if they want to use a cleaner resin. We have reduced the footprint of our machines, using a smaller machine for the same output. If we look at efficiencies, you are doing with less manpower, energy, and service now,” he added.
Davis-Standard’s DS Activ-Check allows converters to proactively predict when a line can break down. The predictive maintenance software also helps in taking less time for starting up the line and thereby saving energy and raw material.
Murugaiah explained, “I have been coming to India for the last six months, and I think the buzz and the excitement, the thinking of growth is very strong. Food packaging is taking off in India. The middle class and many consumers in the country are increasingly aware of good packaging. People wanting to buy food and eat, or heat and eat is becoming a trend – new supermarkets, food retail chains, and grocery stores are coming up that offer nice packaging on the shelves and make sure that food is fresh. I think that people are getting more aware, and they are going up the food chain, prepared to pay a little bit more money for good packaging that’s sound and safe for consumption.”
