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The Sensex has rallied well over the past month, even crossing its highest point rally of the past six months. The question on everyone’s mind was has the market recovered? Has the Indian packaging industry survived the global economic recession? While most would claim that the worst is over, many thoughts are still hovering on a note of cautious optimism. Compare this to eight months ago, with the doomsayers predicting a bleak outlook for the economy. But according to the luxury packaging service providers PSA spoke to in Mumbai, things are looking up.

Over the years

Since its first beginnings in 1884, the retailer Marks & Spencer has evolved into something of a UK institution, adorning the High Street or shopping mall of most urban centres. In recent times, the affectionate abbreviation of their name to ‘Marks & Sparks’ has been streamlined as plain M&S; the long-standing St Michael trademark has been quietly dropped in favour of a string of demographically targeted brand-names such as Autograph; Per Una; Blue Harbour. Behind these labels, however, the quality of its products and level of technical innovation within its packaging has remained constant. Furthermore, no other store has become quite so synonymous with a particular brand of British life-style.

The inkjet solutions for packaging went beyond the usual specialty marking systems to actually demonstrate the full scale colour production of large size board and corrugated cartons on machines such as the very fast and the SunJet that was demonstrated at a customer site near Dusseldorf. Many of the newer flatbed UV inkjet printers such as the HP Scitex XP5300 and XP 2700 can also be used for some of these POP applications. Both of these are near the dozen mark as far as Indian installs.

EskoArtwork’s fully-owned subsidiary and Global Resource Centre at Bangalore will be headed by Mr.  Dinesh Chandra, who has been overseeing Esko’s Indian operations since 2000. According to Mr. Chandra, “The opening of the Global Resource Centre in Bangalorre reinforces EskoArtwork’s global market coverage, complementing the resources we have already deployed in Europe, North America and the Far East.”

The main emphasis was on shelf ready packaging (SRP) highlighted at theme-oriented collective pavilions at the show’s Innovation Parc for Packaging. Participants in the pavilions included, among others, Heidelberg, MAN Roland, EskoArtwork, Metro, M-Real, Siegwerk, Smurfit-Kappa and COPACO. Products on display reflect the industry’s major trends such as the increased use of robots, software integration, RFID, bioplastics, waste reduction, recycling and energy saving technologies.

For many years, Windmöller & Hölscher (W&H) has been known to converters in the flexible packaging market as a supplier of complete blown film lines. Less known may be the fact that the company also utilises its expertise in order to retrofit older W&H blown film lines as well as other makes of blown film equipment with modern components and modules from its current product range. The focus of W&H‘s retrofit program is on increasing output rates, improving film quality, enhancing the efficiency through increased effective up-time, extending the flexibility and reducing waste as well as material usage. Retrofit solutions offered for these purposes range from resin supply to controlled gravimetric metering, plasticising units, different dies, sizing cages and haul-offs and also encompasses the winder and the entire process automation concept.

Every visitor entering the shop floor of the spanking new flexible packaging plant of UFlex Ltd. in Jammu, North India has to wear a net cap and sign a health questionnaire querying whether or not the person is free of certain specified ailments, infections and allergies! Following this, the visitor passes through a double door chamber which gives a pressure air wash. This is symbolic of the company’s emphasis on hygiene and safety in a factory producing packaging material for many companies in the food and pharmaceutical industry.

What new interesting developments can one look forward to seeing at this year’s Interpack? While some exhibitors have released advance information on what will be on display, based on which we have written up a company-wise preview, most people are playing their cards very close to their chest. We predict that most new products or solutions on display will be related to the most acutely felt concerns and needs of brand-owners and consumers. Some of those worth looking out for are:

Unfortunately, a lot of incorrect notions still abound, helped in no small measure by many different reports and claims or counter-claims published by a wide variety of people or organisations, each with different axes to grind, all intent on saying, a la Jack Horner, “what a good boy I am”. Everybody but everybody is bursting his guts to announce how good and responsible a corporate citizen and “green” he is and how many barrels of oil he’s saved or how many cars he’s taken off the road. Many of these claims are misleading or exaggerated. A lot of confusion certainly exists on what really constitutes sustainability in packaging. This write-up is an attempt to explain the basics involved though it must be admitted that the whole mélange of issues is aggravatingly complex and beset with contradictions and conflicts of interest between different fundamental objectives.