At Plastindia 2015, Czech Republic-based Ligum promoted sleeves for rotogravure, lamination, plate mounting and direct laser engraving (DLE) applications. The company’s plant is located in Jablonecnad Nisou and is among the leading manufacturers of sleeves for direct laser engraving in Europe.
“At Plastindia our focus is on promoting the DLE technology which is very new in India. The first DLE machine is expected to be installed in India in March. We see great potential in this segment in India as more and more machines get installed here, this will result in increased demand for Ligum sleeves,” said Bhupendra Srivastava, director at Insight Communications, which promotes Ligum’s high-end sleeves for gravure, flexo and lamination applications in India.
Insight Communications is one of the largest sales and service partner for graphic arts equipment for the printing industry in India. Srivastava explained that the DLE technology is very popular in Europe and it has the potential to become popular in India too. He said that flexo printing has gained acceptance in India in the last few years.
“Since India is a market dominated by gravure, we see a huge room for growth in the flexo printing segment as it offers lot of advantages. It helps insolvent saving, reduces wastage, has a quick makeready and consumes less energy which is ecofriendly. More flexo machines have been imported in India as compared to gravure machines in the last five years,” Srivastava said.
Talking about Ligum’s plans for India and the response it has received from the Indian market, the company’s managing director, Tomas Pluhar said, “We have seen solid growth in India and last year we achieved high growth although we had a very small base. But we remain very positive about the Indian market. Although going forward we might not see such high growth but the rate of growth will remain high.”
Pluhar added that the company has also thought about setting a manufacturing plant in India in the future. “In the short-term we would be selling imported sleeves but once we have a substantial user base in India we may look at setting up a manufacturing base in India,”Pluhar stated. About the response received at Plastindia, Srivastava said that lot of leads have been generated and about two to three deals are expected to be signed.
