manroland to aggressively target medium and small printers in India

With a wide range of printing technology solutions tailor made for the Indian market, manroland India is well equipped to capture a larger share of the pie, and will increasingly focus on small and medium size companies. This was conveyed by Rafael Penuela Torres, executive vice president-sales, manroland AG in an interaction with SK Khurana, editor, Print & Publishing, on the sidelines to the plant inauguration of Mass Packsols Pvt Ltd in Vadodara (Gujarat).

Talking on the subject of progress made so far after having established their own India office three years ago, Rafael confirmed his happiness over the initiatives taken. Nevertheless – ‘Never is enough’. The overall concept adopted has been to go beyond the ‘just selling the machines’ concept and be on their own with Indian expertise. Selling the presses is easy, but helping printing companies differently has been one of their motives and efficient after sales service is part of that.

Commenting on the next year targets, Rafael informed that they will be expecting fifty percent more unit sales and said, “Our immediate programmes in serving our existing customers better, regular visits by our service staff is on the cards. These visits termed as ‘Clean Desk Meetings’ shall be covering two ways: the first being, to study the utilisation of the machine’s capabilities fully or not, and if not, helping the printers in this direction; and the second one to motivate our customers to opt for maintenance contracts so as the machines remain working all the time with least stopping. This type of maintenance contracts shall altogether be different from extended warranties which have been the preferred choice till date.

Divulging more in details, the impact of manroland’s new re-structuring/stand alone policies announced recently and specifically on Indian printing companies, Rafael stated, “There has been discussions/rumours as manroland moving towards mergers/acquisition/co-operation concept in the last eighteen months. But having decided by their investors/board members very clearly that manroland has to proceed on its own, utilising its existing strengths and achieving new targets, grow together internally and externally and at least try to come back to the level of 60-70 percent of sales revenues of the year 2007 in next one to two years. Re-structuring is also newer step planned as regards to their manufacturing activities spread at multi locations. Consolidating these plants in such a way shall mean that manroland is going to have one facility to manufacture components for sheetfed and web-presses simultaneously and assembling activities in separate locations. This decision will bring more efficiency that too economically.”

“Printing as such need not be termed as ‘commodity’ but as a ‘value added concept’, customized configured to develop a new market like incorporation of inline foiler,” mentioned Rafael. Other important steps to be taken by them for Indian market shall include ‘targeting each customer differently’.

Despite the company’s new measures leading to reductions in employees by about 10 percent by the end of the year 2012, the more people will be appointed for manroland operations in India. “We believe in ‘TOP’ (Technology, Organisation, and People) concept, providing 360 degree consultancy for performance improvement,” concluded Rafael who was on his visit to Latin America, India and China. Rafael also did not forget to mention that India is very price conscious market way ahead to China. Printers here do not want prefer highly configured machines and as such require to be treated differently than rest of the world.