Andy Yarrow, Regional Commercial Director, and Hersh Lulla, Regional Marketing Manager, Miraclon share more about their participation at Labelexpo 2024.
P&P : Tell us about Miraclon’s focus on India?
Andy : First of all India is a fantastic market for us. It’s probably our strongest market in Asia Pacific. I joined the business in January last year, and am really amazed at the adoption of FlexcelNX systems in India. We have a huge customer base here, which is obviously very important for us. I think what’s critical is the acceptance of the technology is very wide reaching across the whole of India, both in narrow labels and narrow format, but also in wide web flexibles as well. There’s still lots of growth opportunities here. I see double digit growth across all of our markets in Asia Pacific and India is obviously leading the way and we have a really great team here.
P&P : What was your experience at Labelexpo?
Andy : It’s always interesting coming to a trade show because you expect to speak to new customers, but our team here knows everybody. But in general, we’re seeing very good adoption across the entire industry. We closed a deal with a new customer of ours, Digiflex.
We’re hoping to close some more deals for our Shine LED, for Flexce lNX imaging systems.
P&P : What are the trends in the industry?
Andy : Miraclon is trying to push forward the concept of modern Flexo. We’ve seen a huge number of new presses being installed as people look to invest in flexo and move some of their volume from gravure. We think that flexo is the future. We’re trying to give people the ability to achieve the visual parity on the shelf.
Hersh : Flexo is so key to us. But we know that even though the plates or the technology that we have is, let’s say, one of the biggest enablers,it can’t work alone. So we need to have a collaboration with the press supplier, with tapes, with inks, etc because unless the suppliers and the industry partners work together to help the customer, we can’t get the optimum output.
P&P : Towards sustainability, what are the efforts that the Miraclon is doing on their part?
Andy : With this modern flexo approach, people can reduce waste by not having to buy lots of spot colors that sit on the shelf and eventually have to be discarded. So being more efficient in the way that you run your press. We have one customer in Sri Lanka who’s able to do a changeover in 12 minutes for CMYK.
Besides, in terms of technology, obviously we have our water wash solution Ultra, of which we’re installing more and more units in Asia Pacific now. This is obviously important to reduce solvents in the environment as well.
People don’t understand that if you could finish the jobs that you have maybe 20% quicker, or you could have lesser stoppages, or you could have just lesser waste and reruns, that would just have a tremendous impact on sustainability.
Our technology and our people, the expertise that we can bring to the table can help people achieve those sustainability goals and targets as well and have a big drop in their carbon emissions.