India Converting Show 2010 India Flexo Show 2010 PackPlus 2010 3 - 6 December, 2010, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India
                    International Conference & Exhibition on Package Printing & Production

Convert To Gain
The Indian economy is growing and so is the Packaging industry. As growth rides on increased industrial production and international trade, demands on package converters has become more demanding and sophisticated. There are close to 5,000 box plants scattered throughout the subcontinent in classic developing-country industry fashion: mostly fragmented and family-owned. So how does the country meet this ever increasing demand?
The larger Indian converters have been adopting the latest technologies and several high-end machines have been installed in the country in the past few years. These machines are largely imported from the western countries, with Germany and Italy accounting for almost 45% of the total packaging machinery imports. However, as the need to upgrade is felt by the smaller converters and corrugators and many commercial printers diversify into package printing, there is an increasing focus on machines made in Taiwan, Korea and also China. Meantime, the Indian machinery manufacturers have also geared up and are today making machines that are lapped up by the growing industry in India. Some of these machinery manufacturers are also making inroads in the export markets and are moving beyond the traditional Asian neighbours and the countries in the Gulf to South Africa, East Europe and even South America.
However, the present per capita consumption of packaging in the country is dramatically lower than the global averages. All the pointers indicate that the packaging industry is set to move to a higher level of growth between 20-25% from the present level of around 12-15 percent. The potential of growth is much larger and unrealized.

World over, Flexography has become the pre-dominant medium for package printing. The use of flexo has also been growing in India. Several sophisticated CI flexo presses have been installed in the past six months. The booming label industry is riding a narrow web flexo invasion as folding carton manufacturers also take a look at this technology. The Indian corrugators have been increasingly adopting flexo printing with water-based inks. The coming years should see a larger share of printing going to flexo in the converting and corrugating industries.