In a low key conference in Mumbai, Raj Srinivasan, Managing Director, Materials India and John C Quinn, Vice President and General Manager, Roll Materials Asia Pacific announced the commissioning of Avery Dennison’s new factory in early January 2008.
The state-of-the-art plant is Avery Dennison’s third manufacturing facility in India and represents an investment of over US $13 million. The unit is located in Ranjangaon, a short distance from Pune. It is situated on a 28 acre site, includes a new hot melt tandem coating line and brings Avery Dennison Roll Materials Group’s total investment in India to more than $30 million. It will produce technically advanced pressure-sensitive materials for the Asia Pacific region.
At the moment, India has a low per capita label consumption of less than ½ a square metre. Therefore, the potential for future growth is huge. The growth segments are P S Labels for foods and beverages, cosmetics and toiletries, EDP, pharmaceuticals, security and logistics. This is the reason manufacturers are investing in new plants. As consumer goods companies are vying for shelf space, labels are becoming a very core issue for marketing. Self-adhesive labels are now evident in greater volumes in everyday life.
This is more or less what Dean A. Scarborough, President and Chief Executive Officer of Avery Dennison stated. “During the last decade, the economic growth of India and the surrounding region has been phenomenal. We are proud to have been part of that growth. The new Pune facility reflects our strong commitment to helping our industrial and consumer customers in India and the Asia Pacific region build on this incredible record and remain one of the major drivers of economic expansion in the world,” he said.
In addition to Pune, Avery Dennison has major manufacturing operations in Gurgaon, which it opened in 1997, and Bangalore, which was part of its 2007 acquisition of the global label and tag maker, Paxar. The Company also maintains a network of sales and distribution centres including locations at Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata and has a presence in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
As Scarborough pointed out, “the combination with Paxar expands our presence in the growing retail and brand identification market, enabling us to provide better products and services to our customers and allowing us to more quickly tap into new segments of the market – including retailers serving local customers in emerging markets such as China and India.”
Virtually every Avery Dennison business group has a presence in India, including its Roll Materials, Retail Information Services, Graphics and Reflective and Specialty Tape business segments. The Company employs over 1100 people in India and more than 2500 in South Asia.
“During the last decade, Avery Dennison has actively championed and spearheaded many major initiatives in close interaction with our customers that have significantly improved label converting and packaging for major industrial users in India and the surrounding area,” said Raj Srinivasan, Managing Director, Materials India. “The Pune facility will enhance Avery Dennison’s capabilities to continue to grow the market for pressure sensitive materials in close interaction with our customers, as the dynamic changes in the economic environment drives the need for higher appeal and aesthetics in packaging”
Established more than 70 years ago in California, Avery Dennison is the global leader in the pressure-sensitive materials industry and its products are used in a wide variety of end user industries. These major end user business segments include pharmaceuticals, health & personal care, home care, lube oil, EDP, automobile and automobile components and retail. It is a FORTUNE 500 company with 2006 sales of US$ 5.6 billion. Following its acquisition of Paxar in 2007, Avery Dennison employs over 30,000 people in 51 countries worldwide. Their labelstock products are sold under the well-known FASSON brand. Aside from the Neal Research Facility, Avery Dennison has also set up a Self-Adhesive Converting College in Kunshan, China. This professional training facility offers training programs in self-adhesive label printing and converting technologies for partners and label printers across the Asia Pacific Region. Since its inception, it has trained and graduated over a thousand students from countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Japan, India and China.
“India is one of our most important growth markets,” said John C Quinn, Vice President and General Manager, Roll Materials Asia Pacific. “We established our first plant in India in 1997 and are the country’s largest producer of pressure-sensitive label materials. By opening this new facility in Pune we will be able to better serve our growing customer base in the region by providing the best available quality products and services, and continue to be an active partner with them in growing their businesses.”
News about the new factory by Avery Dennison, has been welcomed by printers, who feel this will ensure a steady market growth and quality development.
