Another book publisher and commercial printer diversifies
Meerut-based, Vardhman Books International is a publisher and commercial printer and one of the many commercial printers that diversified to monocarton production at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic two years ago. The assets acquired by the company for its commercial printing and book and notebook production including its Komori press for conventional printing have now been deployed for carton printing. In addition a Heidelberg CD102 5-color plus coater press with UV curing was installed for carton printing a year ago.
The key additions that were needed for carton production were the converting machines, and an autoplaten DGM technocut 1050 die-cutter for converting 80 to 2000 gsm board was installed in 2021. The diecutter is capable of converting 3-ply corrugated sheets up to 5mm in thickness. The DGM technofold 1100PC folder gluer also installed in the past year’s makeover, can produce straight line, crash lock bottom, and double wall design cartons solid board from 170 gsm-800 gsm and three-ply corrugated cartons up to 20 mm folded thickness. It is also capable of producing CD/pocket folders. To complete the carton converting section and be able to supply the variety of cartons that the market now sees as a minimum, an automatic flute lamination machine and corrugation machine from Nataraj. Thus the Vardhman packaging plant has quickly geared to manufacture both mono-cartons and corrugated 3 and 5-ply cartons.
Vardhaman Books International, is not stopping with mere migration to packaging but is planning to grow this segment with further investments and structure. Company director Anuj Jain says, “We have made a new plant with a covered area of 2 lakh square feet entirely for our new packaging division.”
The new plant is adjacent to the current printing plant and can be expected to come into production with full capacity in the next couple of years.
Jain explains that the company has been a comprehensive supplier to schools for several decades, “For the past 45 years, we have been manufacturing a wide range of lightweight, attractively designed, and easy to carry notebooks and school books for students of all ages and classes ranging from nursery to twelfth. Our comprehensive range has included convent notebooks, long notebooks, hardbound registers, drawing copy, practical notebooks, punch paper, A4 registers, exam and answer booklets, clipboards, slip pads, account register, spiral binding register, soft bounding book, and so on.”
Nevertheles, the company is now entering the packaging sector with a great deal of commitment and has begun by producing monocartons and corrugated boxes for the food, lighting and electronics, textiles, and the pharmaceutical industries.
While packaging has found a good wicket in the past two years, private textbook publishers who also print their books have found it rough going. The migration of commercial printers to carton production actually started several years and has been greatly accelerated by the pandemic and the lock downs that have kept schools shut for the most part of the last two years.
According to our sister website (www.ippstar.org), textbook demand has also been low with the closure of schools for the past 22 months. Apart from the uncertainty and weak consumption of books by digital classrooms, many publishers have been waiting for the curriculum changes before placing their book production orders for the coming season. The production of textbooks for private schools typically starts in September for deliveries beginning in December, which go on till March for the following school year. Rural education and literacy have taken a bigger knock since digital Zoom classrooms have functioned more sporadically in the countryside, often relying on children using only smartphones. The private schools textbook industry has come to a standstill in the past two years although there is some prospect of schools, and hence, textbook demand reawakening for the April 2022 school year.
The Covid-19 pandemic led to the country-wide lockdown on 25 March 2020. It will be two years tomorrow as I write this. What have we learned in this time? Maybe the meaning of resilience since small companies like us have had to rely on our resources and the forbearance of our employees as we have struggled to produce our trade platforms.
The print and packaging industries have been fortunate, although the commercial printing industry is still to recover. We have learned more about the digital transformation that affects commercial printing and packaging. Ultimately digital will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future.
Web analytics show that we now have readership in North America and Europe amongst the 90 countries where our five platforms reach. Our traffic which more than doubled in 2020, has at times gone up by another 50% in 2021. And advertising which had fallen to pieces in 2020 and 2021, has started its return since January 2022.
As the economy approaches real growth with unevenness and shortages a given, we are looking forward to the PrintPack India exhibition in Greater Noida. We are again appointed to produce the Show Daily on all five days of the show from 26 to 30 May 2022.
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