Baddi-based Marks Emballage has become the first Indian packaging company to order two Gallus Labelmaster flexo presses at a time, rounding off the investment with a Pantec Rhino II and Prati Kit. The new investment shall make them stand out in both capabilities and capacities in the label industry.

The two Gallus Labelmaster presses – an eight-color and ten-colour combination of Plus and Advanced variant will be installed at Marks’ new, second plant in Baddi soon.

Aaditya Kashyap, the managing director at Marks, said, “I saw ECS 340 in the Pune AIDKC center and was very impressed with the machine. However, when I saw the Labelmaster, it was love at first sight. Its features – servo dry technology, easy to use print operation with light print cylinders, consistent quality at high-speed, the new technology with the screen printing with over 100 meters per minute, I was convinced this is the press I want.”

Marks is promoted by a young entrepreneur from a prosperous pharma business family. The company started in 2013 with a modest label production facility to cater to pharma businesses in Baddi. It began with a Chinese flexo press, followed it up with a  Bobstflexo press. “Both being mechanical presses; automation was something that was missing, where operator dependency to run these presses makes printing more human-dependent,” said Kashyap.

Today, Marks caters to some of the key names in the pharma industry. With the initial success and after seeing a definite requirement, the company decided to make a more significant foray into the label segment.

Aaditya explained, “When I look at the packaging market in India, especially labels, it is getting bigger and bigger. The purchasing power of every citizen has increased in India. We have seen packaging enter the interiors of India, and everything that wasn’t within reach earlier, are now easily available. Also within the Indian market, there are new Indian companies which are established with a strong belief that as an Indian company, they have to make things in India. All this is, and will, trigger growth in the label, carton, and flexible industry.”

He added, “On a very conservative side, the label market is estimated to be around Rs 3,000-crore. A 15% growth means Rs 450-crore of label jobs are there for the taking. All the brand owners need are quality label printers with capacities to produce, and grab the jobs. We are now starting with investing five-million Euros for our expansion, and there is a lot more to come.”

Chandrakant Gadhia, vice president for operations at Marks added that his company’s aim was to invest in a machine, which will have an excellent price-performance ratio and help achieve the highest operational efficiency for the company. “The Labelmaster offers us high automation thus reducing the human complexity and flexibility to work with different substrates like labels, monofoils, shrink sleeves, and lamitubes among others. It was one of the big win-points for the Labelmaster. Also since it is the latest generation designs, and it will remain in force for at least ten years. Lastly, having a competent local Gallus team in India sealed the deal in their favor.”

Samir Patkar, regional sales head – Asia for Gallus, who along with Ferdinand Rüesch, vice president of the Gallus board of directors, were present during the signing of the dual deal. Patkar said, Gallus’ newest flexo press, the Labelmaster series, addresses today’s challenges of the label printers focusing on increasing the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

“There are two critical issues the label printers face. One, the print run-lengths are getting shorter. At the same time, Printers are complaining about higher job changeover times. This leads to a serious need of the hour to get into higher operational efficiency.  It’s a worldwide issue, but this pain-point is felt more among the Indian label printers because of higher inefficiency levels. Most of these inefficiencies come from the in-house processes followed in the print shops, particularly the lack of standardization processes. The Labelmaster is designed to address these very challenges of the label printer and focuses on improving productivity and keeping the print rate to the minimum.”

He added, “The second is: whatever is printed should be saleable. There’s an in-house print waste which cannot be sold, which means it’s the label company which is paying for it, not the brand owner. It’s eating away the profit margins. For the first time, Gallus has a press that can deliver consistent print quality at a speed up to 200 meters per min. The web path of the Labelmaster is designed to be short at 1.4 meters between two print units. The press is equipped with the latest automation of the servo drives making it simpler for the operator to run the press.”

Gadhia said the ten-color Labelmaster would be integrated with Pantec Rhino II print decoration kit – a vital investment for pharma jobs with security features. “The pharma space is seeing two changes – one is going the OTC route, which is cosmetic, allowing as much decoration on the packaging as possible. And second is security. Today security for pharma means providing vanilla holography, which is replicable by any vendor. Unless you can bring in some specialized multi-foil, add in a micro-emboss somewhere, you are not presenting any viable solution to the brand owners. You use the power of technology to produce that special value-add where security is concerned. With the Gallus and Pantec combo, we have a unique strength for cosmetic, personal care, FMCG, as well as wine and spirit labels too, thus giving us a platform to venture into jobs beyond pharma.”

Kashyap, who is passionate to build one of the best label and packaging companies concluded, “We have made an investment which makes us future-ready. It allows us to build our capacity as well as move into newer segments. We will be moving forward step by step, where we keep on adding portfolio as we progress, starting with self-adhesive labels.”