On Thursday evening the 30th of May one gets the idea that something big is cooking at the RMGT stand in Hall 15 at drupa. On Friday we catch up with Vinay Kaushal of Provin Technos the Indian distributor of RMGT that a breakthrough deal has been signed for a pair of packaging presses by a single customer – including an RMGT 970 (38-inch) 8-color plus coater and an RMGT 106 (42-inch) 6-color plus coater. Both packaging presses are ‘UV-ready’ and are to be installed before the end of the financial year in a still-secret location.
This is a considerable step forward for RMGT in the Indian monocarton market where it has sold several 38-inch long presses with coaters for carton printing but was not able to finalize a deal for 40-inch plus press for several reasons including Yen volatility, delivery schedules, feature-rich automation and simply, price. However, with the Indian monocarton industry growing steadily, it was time for the heavyweight model in the RMGT line to re-enter the Indian B1 market for new packaging presses, which it strongly impacted more than a decade ago. Over the years, RMGT has added significant automation features to this press that are tempting but add considerable CAPEX.
The Indian packaging converter largely remained at home and left the deal finalization to Vinay Kaushal – actually agreeing to it on a Zoom call. The final papers went back and forth overnight and Provin’s Akshay Kaushal added his inputs from Delhi as the signed papers were exchanged from the RMGT stand at Messe Dusseldorf. There was no Champagne celebration since the customer was not present.
Dozen to fifteen RMGT India installations in FY24-25
RMGT-Provin have also signed three other presses at drupa taking their exhibition sales count to five presses as of 31 May 2025. The other presses are an 8-color perfector, a 5-color plus coater and a 4-color press. These are in addition to the seven multicolor sheetfed offest presses sold before drupa which include an RMGT 8-color perfector, two 6-color RMGT 920 presses, and four 4-color presses. If the RMGT supply chains are able to gear up, it is likely that Provin will be able to sell and install anywhere from a dozen to fifteen presses in the financial year from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.
