On 29 January 2015 TCPL Packaging inaugurated its approximately 80,000 square foot purpose designed and built space near Guwahati in Assam in Northeast India. The plant is fully configured with a KBA 106 full UV 7-color plus coater press running at 18,000 sheets an hour, two Bobst Novacut diecutters with blanking and a Braussard diecutter foiler as well as two folding machines and three corrugation machines and a carton inspection machine. There is an FFEI CtP in the prepress department which together with the plant’s MIS will connect to TCPL’s ERP system.
The new plant on an 8-acre site in Chaygaon about an hour away from Guwahati by road, starts up with a complete configuration for producing 8,000 to 9,000 tonnes of folding cartons and micro-fluted litho-laminated cartons annually. While this will add significantly to TCPL’s top and bottom lines in the coming financial year, the company should easily surpass a turnover of `500 crore in the current financial year from 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015. TCPL Packaging is a publicly traded company celebrating its 25-year anniversary this year and it has had a sterling year on the Bombay Stock Exchange where its share price has risen more than eight times from `65 in February 2014 to a high of `479 in the last week of January 2015.
The inauguration of the new plant brought together three generations of the Kanoria promoter family of the publicly traded TCPL Packaging. Also present were TCPL’s team of about 40 top professionals who run the company’s five plants across the country, senior executives of major brand owners that are TCPL customers including Hindustan Unilever, Godrej and Emami as well as a host of suppliers and well-wishers both from the industry and personal friends of the Kanoria family.
The founder of TCPL, KK Kanoria paid tribute to his son Saket Kanoria for the company’s professionalism and fast growth from a single plant in Silvassa to two plants there and additional greenfield plants in Haridwar, Goa, and now in Chaygaon near Guwahati in Assam. Grandson Akshay Kanoria who has been instrumental in the building of the plant in a record breaking 9 months from groundbreaking is to play a management role in its expansion to the Northeast and in the development and servicing of exports to nearby countries.
Saket Kanoria reiterated that this plant is seen as a way of servicing many of its existing clients in the Eastern parts of India as well as new clients in the Northeast of the country. Kanoria said, “Basically we see this as a big opportunity and a gateway to the entire East of India besides SE Asia and Bangladesh.” Kanoria also gave special thanks to Aditya Surana of Indo-Polygraph and to KBA for airfreighting a critical component that was damaged while unloading the crates at Chaygaon. This crucial re-shipment plus the requisite engineering services contributed to the inauguration taking place on time.
The noted political journalist and editor Shekhar Gupta who spent some of his early years as a reporter in the 1980s covering the insurgency in the region and Jitesh Khosla chief secretary of Assam both spoke about the progress of the state in the past 25 years. Gupta is a highly informed cheerleader for the country’s economic progress and he was enthusiastic about the modernity and vision of the promoters and their scale of investment that will immediately bring skilled employment to the state. Chief Secretary Khosla acknowledged the state-of-theart and scalable investment by TCPL urging those present to amend their perspectives, “From looking at Assam as a corner of the country, look at it as the gateway to the country. There is a huge interest in the entire region in coming to Assam. Nearby and Asean countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Myanmar and Bangladesh are keen on setting up their consular representation in Guwahati.”
TCPL’s state-of-the-art carton plant in Chaygaon
The modern 80,000 square foot purpose built plant is not only designed for straight production workflow from raw material to output but it is energy saving. It uses daylight panels on the roof, LED lighting, and the novel use of dehumidified air being pumped into the converting area to cope with the humid climate in the region. The plant can most likely be expanded to about four times its present capacity of more than 8,000 to 9,000 tonnes of monocartons and litholaminated cartons.
The KBA Rapida 106 plus coater is a full UV 7-color combination press running at 18,000 sheets an hour. It contains three interdeck UV curing cartridges that are interchangeable between any two units and there are both UV and infra-red curing systems at the end of the press.
In the converting section there are two Bobst Novacut diecutters with blanking and two Bobst folder-gluers. There is also the Brausse automatic foil stamping machine, an Heiber and Schroeder window patching machine, a single-colour ZHL gravure press and an Yii Lee film laminator. For litho-laminated cartons there is a Paktek flute laminator while for inspection of carton blanks and finished cartons a Sergusa 3-camera inspection system should be installed by the time you read this.
