Apex International is a global enterprise supplying anilox, glue set, and metering products and print maintenance solutions to the corrugated and flexographic printing industries. Its Accora glue-set solutions help corrugators worldwide to add finishing touches to their corrugated boxes. It also provides flexographic anilox solutions to the flexographic printing market.
Apex has a global presence with plants in The Netherlands, Italy, Brazil and the US. Apex International recently opened its Asia Pacific manufacturing plant and FlexoKITE experience center in Sinnar near Nashik in India. The FlexoKITE center is the fifth plant of Apex International that services the entire Asia Pacific region right from Australia and New Zealand to Southeast Asia, China, and India. The Sinnar plant has been designed to provide live training, support, and education about flexo technology and the latest equipment.
At the recently concluded IndiaCorr Expo, Apex showcased aniloxes for all soft printing segments and technologies such as offset printing, corrugated printing, label printing, and flexible packaging using CI flexo presses. At the show it was exhibiting and taking orders for aniloxes and glue roller sets for making corrugated board.
The Covid-19 pandemic situation has had a profound impact on the corrugation industry worldwide. Mahesh Kode, vice president sales, Apex International, who was present at the firm’s booth at IndiaCorr Expo, commented on the state of the industry, “The Covid-19 situation has been prevailing for the last one and a half years. I think the industry is generally recovering from it, and going forward, things should only get better.
“I joined four months back but I think Apex has been doing fairly well. In India, at least we have had good numbers. Asia Pacific, and as a region Southeast Asia has been a little slow in the recovery but I think things will start getting better from now on,” added Kode on the economic recovery for Apex International during the global pandemic.
IndiaCorr Expo was the first event in India since the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns bringing the Indian corrugation industry together, physically. Though a little apprehensive about the footfalls in the exhibition, Apex International received an optimistic response from the event. Kode observed, “We thought, let us test the waters and take part in this exhibition and see whether people start venturing out. I would say that compared to previous shows that were organized by the event organizers, the footfall is less. However, it is not disappointing as we have found some right customers and even though the footfall is lower, we have had fairly good sessions with a lot of important customers.”
Sharing the company’s future expansion plans Kode concluded, “We have recently acquired additional land next to where we are operating in Sinnar and we will be adding one more factory there.”
