Although he has an afternoon flight to catch, Siddharth Kejriwal, the managing director of Parksons Packaging discusses the company’s two recent acquisitions of MK Packaging and Fortuner in a calm and transparent manner. Both acquisitions were announced by the Warburg-Pincus-backed organization within days of each other at the end of March and the first week of April 2023.
Kejriwal says that the company’s combined infrastructure of plants and buildings around the country can accommodate more than double its current production. The third K&B press has just started up in the Guwahati plant and the Punjab plant’s recent expansion is well in place.
Revamp and new capacities for pharma and healthcare at Parksons Baddi
He says there is no immediate need or plan to add capacity in the MK plant in Silvassa, but that the former Fortuner plant, which is now known as the Parksons Packaging Baddi plant, is already being revamped. “A new K&B packaging press, a Bobst diecutter, and folder gluer should be running in the next few months – by July or August 2023. Since it is a plant focussed on the pharmaceutical and healthcare packaging segment, the equipment will have the appropriate options such as those for Braille embossing.”
Kejriwal explains the overall outlook for the company, saying, “With all our plants across 13 locations, we have the infrastructure to more than double our production. Our printing and converting capacity includes more than 35 well-configured presses and line-balanced finishing and converting equipment.”
In our brief conversation, Kejriwal answers our questions on the recent flurry of acquisitions by the company, and the possible need to scale up further. “To find the right companies to partner at this time in quick succession, we were lucky,” he says, adding, “There is no immediate compulsion to necessarily keep up this pace of acquisitions. We are growing and we believe in the India growth story, which is good for at least the next seven or eight years, and we are well poised to take advantage of the overall economic developments.”
Kejriwal adds that the company is continually honing talent and has a very strong human resource department. “It helps that the former promoters of our acquisition in Baddi were techno-entrepreneurs and they are taking a hands-on approach to revamping the plant and in the new capacity additions there.”
From our conversation, it becomes clear that our economy and the packaging industry are both pointing to bigger enterprises and that the next generation is well-poised to manage larger enterprises than family legacies could have imagined. Their access to capital for both organic and inorganic growth has come at the right time, matching their ambition and talent. Additionally, keeping former promoters and stakeholders together as a ‘corporate family’ adds knowledge, experience, and character to the industry. These values are not easy to come by.
