The country-wide Covid-19 break the chain lockdown is being confronted by leading packaging companies as they proceed to obtain permission to work as essential suppliers to the food and pharma industry. Converters like Skypack and SB Packaging in the North have been working from day one of the lockdown. Report of several others such as TCPL and Essel Propack with plants around the country (and even across the world) reflect similar efforts to supply their customers continuously. Even after obtaining permissions under the
Essential Services Act, the lockdown has created severe restraints that need to be talked step by step to create an antiseptic and hygienic environment hitherto considered impossible in an Indian packaging plant.
Many packaging and label businesses have preferred to keep plants closed for lack of a full complement of employees, transport, and logistics. They are following best practices of
idling and orderly shutting down with the help of their suppliers’ manuals for such emergencies and also the benefit of remote diagnostics. Remote diagnostics and maintenance have found their moment. Even remote operation, monitoring, and sending production workflow files from the pre-press operator’s home have become a reality.
The packaging plants that are working to anywhere from 10 to 30% capacity have had to convince their employees to work and make complete arrangements for them to satisfy widespread fears of infection from Covid-19. It is tough to be operationally safe with minimal staff and also to provide nearby living quarters with hygienic conditions. Raw material supply and logistics for delivery are challenges, too, although packaging
companies in special industrial zones are already closer to their customers.
In any case, the government is also learning step by step, and the Ministry of Food Processing has set up a Grievance Cell. Food processors are hopeful that the grievance cell will iron out some of the variability in the enforcement of norms and permissions, especially for the logistics of raw material supplies and reaching markets and consumers.
Active converting
Most packaging and label companies are doing similar things to get their plants going and mostly running them to partial capacity, with about 30% staff and many of the managers working from home. The shop floor managers are learning that the skilled workers and machine operators are the real bosses who often teach the managers to hold the reigns while they perform critical and more pressing tasks. Remote working and the use of software tools for pre-press workflow have become common as have web meetings.
Several companies have made videos and newsletters, which they can share with their brand owner customers and employees to reassure them of their hygiene and safe operational actions. Posters and training of employees are part of this. Entry to transport
that has been disinfected and cleaned after use temperature guns is restricted for social distancing. Sanitizers that had already become popular in Indian converting plants have become ubiquitous in bank and shop, let alone the packaging plants that pioneered their
use.
Operator panels are covered with plastic wraps and changed every shift. Lunchrooms have become safe kitchens and training, canteen buildings, and company guest houses have been added to with additional living quarters. New negotiations and deals are being done with suppliers, and the value and efficiency of digital packaging and label presses are being realized since a single button with a single operator is productive. The converters that are driven to produce are working a full-court press and running in anticipation of the forward pass.
Active to pro-active packaging
In this quarter itself (April to June 2020), we look forward to the delivery of SB Packaging’s new 10-color W&H CI flexo press. Hopefully, the lockdown will lift sufficiently for the new production line to reach from Germany to Hissar near Delhi in North India. The new press will be highly automated and contain the AVT defect detection system. The same order with W&H includes a 3-layer Coex blown film with fully automatic controls. Given the circumstances, even if there is a slight delay in the installation apart from the financial pressure to produce, the new line is an excellent production capacity in place for the middle-future. SB Packaging, like all of us, has to move from the active to the proactive
stage in giving back to the society to ensure full production. We are no longer engaged with employees but with volunteers who take ownership and work with us.
