Kolkata-based Nextgen Printers installed a 7-color Roland 700 sheetfed press with coater at its Howrah plant in October 2016. “The press is imported from Germany while technical support for maintenance is being provided by manroland sheetfed India. We also have dedicated engineers inhouse, who have been trained by manroland,” says Mahesh Khandelwal, director at Nextgen Printers.
The 7-color Roland 700 is a conventional press. Khandelwal’s decision to opt for a conventional press was because Nextgen already has a 7-color KBA Rapida full UV plus coater press at the plant. “Also there was a need for a 28 x 40 inch size press. We now want to do all our conventional jobs on conventional presses while running UV jobs on UV presses. So, in a way, we have seriously started looking at mobilization, utilization and allocation of our resources in a more precise way,” says Khandelwal.
Athough installed in October 2016, the Roland has not yet been into full swing production. Khandelwal says that due to demonetization, there is a dearth in job orders and hence the press has not been operated in its full capacity. However, he expects production on this press to gain momentum by the first quarter of 2017, by which time he hopes things will settle down.
Nextgen’s brand new plant at Howrah started production in 2015. However, the plant will be fully operational by April 2017 as a couple of other equipment are still to be installed in a phased manner. Spread across a built-up area of about 70,000 sq. ft., the plant also houses a fluted carton unit, which is powered by a Paktek laminator, a Bobst punching machine and two flexo presses—single and two color. The volume conversion of the Howrah plant at present is about 400 tons of paper and paper boards per month. The company produces monocartons, window-patched boxes, blister cards, hard boxes as well as erected cartons, besides doing short-run jobs. “The average run length of these jobs is about 5,000 sheets a month. I am always interested in changeovers after every 5,000 to 6,000 sheets,” says Khandelwal.
The company lays great emphasis and focus on its R&D and has always come up with value additions and new innovations for its customers. Khandelwal says that R&D is at the heart of the company and this is what keeps them ahead in the market. “It is because of our new innovations and unique value-addition capabilities that customers keep coming back to us from every part of the country,” he emphasizes.
Since the last one-and-a-half year, Nextgen Printers has been making significant investments in capacity building and modernization of its Howrah plant. The company, which started its first plant in Sikkim in 2010, first installed a 7-color KBA Rapida full UV plus coater press in 2015, followed by further investments in making the plant a highly comprehensive packaging solution provider in Eastern India. The company also bought a Bobst Novacut 106 ER; a Bobst Expertfold 110 folder-gluer, which can handle both duplex and 3-ply carton for making straight line, crash lock bottom, 4- and 6-corner boxes; and a Bobst Foil Stamper Visionfoil 104 during the same span of time. Nextgen Printers also invested in a rotary window patching and lining machine from Heiber Schroder (installed and serviced by Bobst), which was installed in March 2016. “The machinery we possess are the first-of-their-kind in Eastern and North-Eastern India,” quips Khandelwal. “My aim is to provide high-quality packaging solutions to our customers so they don’t have to go places to get their work done.”
