The LMAI Conference held in Jaipur in July attracted a lot of attention from the world market. It had representation from the major global suppliers and many of their key personnel came to experience the event and to better understand the market first-hand. DuPont Packaging Graphics global marketing and strategy manager Chris McArdle along with Hardik Patel of DuPont India took part in the event. Packaging South Asia interacted with both to understand DuPont’s growing focus on the Indian market.
In the Indian market, DuPont has been engaged in understanding the needs of its customers said Hardik Patel. FMCG brand owners and converters who are printing on flexibles, labels, corrugated boxes, and beverage cartons have realized the growing need for quality. In the last few years, with significant improvement in flexo printing technology, the print quality is comparable to gravure and offset, and in many cases flexo demonstrates cost saving.
McArdle said, “In developed regions there is an absolute majority of the flexo technology which is not quite the case here in India. We feel that the flexo market has a lot of growth potential in India. At least for the next five years there should not be any concerns about the growth potential of the label market in India. India’s got plenty of traction for growth for the upcoming few years.”
McArdle feels costs are certainly an important issue anywhere in the global market and especially in the Indian market. He said, “With more and more brand owners and CPGs coming into the Indian market, there certainly will be a tight position where all these brand owners will not be willing to pay a penny more to the printers. But, with proper value addition, we certainly believe that any positive brand owner or CPG will be more than willing to bear out the extra cost. If you are delivering a better product, you should ask for a better price.”
“We as plate suppliers have a big responsibility to have a hand in the value additions that our customers can provide to the brand owners and CPGs. It is a value chain and we are absolutely committed to providing our customers all the solutions that they may need from us. The big brand owners are coming to India and they will of course provide a big thrust to the market overall,” McArdle added.
DuPont Cyrel Easy
DuPont Packaging Graphics recently launched a new flexographic printing plate technology platform – DuPont Cyrel Easy. This new technology platform simplifies the prepress process by building the flat top digital dot directly into the plate, resulting in increased productivity and consistency. This is part of an ongoing effort by DuPont to drive progress in the flexographic printing industry by improving quality, sustainability and productivity. For flexographic printers, converters and trade shops looking for increased productivity, DuPont Cyrel FAST thermal and solvent platemaking system’s efficiency and consistency is increased by removing a separate flat top dot processing step and its associated equipment and costs. Cyrel Easy technology is currently being tested at select DuPont customers around the world, and commercial sales of the first generation of printing plates from the Cyrel Easy platform are scheduled for the third quarter of 2015.
“DuPont as an equipment and solutions supplier to the Indian market has of course recognized the fact that the needs of the Indian market may and can be different than other well established markets such as North America and Western Europe. We are bringing in technology which suits the market overall and attends to the growing needs. That is our overall goal,” concluded McArdle.
