For UK-based Atlas Converting Equipment, which manufactures Atlas Titan slitter-rewinders, the response at Plastindia 2015 was good as the company managed to meet its old customers and some potential customers. In India the company has an installation base close to 140 machines. With economic conditions in India improving, things are expected to look up.
“The last 18 months have been challenging for the company in India but the situation has improved in the last few months,” said Barrie Homewood, sales and marketing director, Titan slitter-rewinder. “Some of the customers who we have served in the last few years are moving to the next phase of investment and expansion.”
Although no machine was displayed at Plastindia, the company was promoting products from across the Titan and Atlas portfolio. Talking about the company’s Indian operations, Homewood disclosed, “We are planning to expand the team here. There are currently three engineers and one sales person. India is one of our bigger markets and we expect that the strength of the team here will continue to grow.”
Commenting on the trends in the Indian flexible packaging industry, he said that the most prominent one was that more and more players are moving towards faster and high technology machines. “A large majority is still using slow and low technology machines in India but that trend is changing driven by the demand for quality, consistency and low downtime. The good thing is that there are now lots of Indian machine manufacturers making top quality machines catering to local demand.”
“The demand for automation is also driven by the fact that the size of the web is getting smaller as well as the thickness is going down. Automation helps one in working on smaller and thinner web because manual work may be prone to errors,” concluded Homewood.
