The Pride of India!

Over and over again, Indians have proved their mettle in all spheres and printing industry is no exception. Three indigenous printing machinery manufacturers who have helped shape the Indian printing industry greatly include Manugraph India Ltd, Mumbai; Autoprint Machinery Manufacturers Pvt Ltd, Coimbatore. and Line O Matic Graphic Industries, Ahmedabad; All these players have made a mark in their respective fields. While Manugrph is India’s largest producer of web offset machines, Line O Matic has made exercise notebook production easy and Autoprint is helping many small and medium-scale printers debut and expand with their portfolio to packaging segment. The Indian printing industry owes a lot to these indigenous machinery manufacturers. Here, P&P brings more info on these companies which undoubtedly have made India proud.

Manugraph India Ltd: ‘Made in India’ machines go places

Manugraph at Printpack India 2011.Established in 1972, Manugraph India Ltd is India’s largest producer of web offset machines. It is the first Indian company to have achieved a breakthrough in exporting “Made in India” printing machines to advanced countries like Germany, France, UK & USA since as early as 1994-95. Over the years, Manugraph has emerged as a thriving, nimble, manufacturing enterprise, mainly, due to its ability to adapt itself rapidly to meet the challenges of a competitive economy. The company has a significant presence in international markets with publishers from Africa, Europe, CIS countries, South America, Middle East & Asia making a demand for Manugraph presses. The company is now the number one single width, single circumference press manufacturing company in the world, with offices and associates across the globe.

“Our commitment to constant innovation, quality, high performance and excellent after-sales service has been our trademark & helped us remain the leaders in the domestic market,” told the spokesperson at Manugraph.

With an installation base of more than 12,500 units worldwide till date, Manugraph has a sizeable chunk of the local market with approximately 65 percent of their sales being local and 35 percent being export. Their reported turnover for the financial year 2012-2013 was Rs. 316.52 crore. So has the economic slowdown affected Manugraph? “Regions in the world highly affected by the economic slowdown were mainly USA, Europe, Australia, however as our concentration was more in the 2 x 1 segment, our markets for this segment were South East Asia, Africa, South America & of-course India which were not really adversely affected by the slowdown. Infact, the slowdown was advantageous to us in a way as the 4×1, 4×2 segment also focused more on 2×1 machines during the slowdown period. Traditionally Manugraph’s domestic business has been around 65 percent, therefore since the domestic market still had demand; the impact was not as much. However, we have certainly implemented certain cost cutting measures across the board, through the last few years, so as to help improve our bottom line,” shared the spokesperson.

And, Manugraph hopes that the economic scenario would change and they are geared up to meet the changing needs. “The domestic market is likely to improve after the 2014 elections. Considering the present scenario of the newspaper industry worldwide, we do not foresee a steep hike in business volumes. However, Manugraph is adding more products to its product portfolio in the coming months so as to meet future niche requirements of the industry,” he told.

As a message to the printing community, he added, “We have always maintained that knowledge is all about reading. We have all read books from our childhood and never seem to forget them. Similarly, reading newspapers or books in hard copies is what keeps us captivated, with their colorful stories, opinions, art and learning which seem to remain in our minds as knowledge almost forever, and it will take some time for science to change it to purely digital reading. “

20 years… 9126 installations… Autoprint comes a long way

Autoprint atPackprint International 2013.Started as a small offset indigenous manufacturer Autoprint Machinery Manufacturers Pvt Ltd has undoubtedly come a long but successful way. After making its mark in the offset printing industry, the company is now gradually mobbing over the largest growing segment – the packaging industry.

From zero to over 9126 installations in a span of just 20 years, the Coimbatore based Autoprint Machinery Manufacturers Pvt Ltd has emerged as a market leader in the offset printing and allied machinery manufacturing industry. Their obsession with quality, and an un-wavering commitment and passion to offer products and services at par with global standards, has paid rich dividends to Autoprint, so much so that they are also the recipient of Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award for achieving excellence in the small scale manufacturing industry.

Small but efficient machines…

Autoprint offers affordable machines in the price range of Rs 3 lakh to 45 lakh. Their range of machines includes small sheet-fed offset printing machines and post press machines. “We are stepping into our 20th year of existence and after making a mark in small offset printing machines, we have made inroads into packaging segment with the launch of die-punching machine, UV coating machine and inspection systems. These machines have been very well received not only in India but also other developing countries,” told Ashok optimistically.

Autoprint at Pamex 2013In lieu of the ban on plastic bags across various cities, people are looking for eco-friendly options and Autoprint offers Knight NX, which is a non-woven bag printing machine. “The changeover time from non-woven to paper is just 30 minutes. People are becoming environment-friendly and this machine helps in producing paper and non-woven carry bags,” told CN Ashok, managing director, Autoprint Machinery Manufacturers Pvt Ltd.

Another popular machine from Autoprint is Repetto 65 die-cutting machine. “This machine is targeted at conventional people using Platen die-cutting machine and seriously looking for an upgrade,” told Ashok.

He also proudly informs that their 4-colour Dion 450+ offset machine has 55 installations to its credit in a short time span of three years. “It has been received very well by people looking at upgrades and expansion. The machine has a wide installation base in south, east and north India,” added Ashok.

Autoprint today and tomorrow…

On asking about their sales turnover this year, Ashok replied, “This year, we had targeted a sale of 580 units, but we feel that it would be in the range of 520-525, all models put together.” Of these, 70 percent of the units have been sold in India and 30 percent amount to exports. It is commendable that the company has exported their machines to 52 countries. “For East Africa and Middle East, we have tied up with Manugraph. Far eastern countries, we have six agents working for us,” he added.

On asking about their future plans, Ashok replied, “In the coming years, the focus would be on packaging.”

Autoprint ties up with TYMI for large format UV coaters

Autoprint has joined hands with TYMI Machinery Industrial Co Ltd for their large format (28”x40”)UV coating machines suitable for the entire packaging segment. With this, Autoprint will have a full gamut of UV coating machines suitable for the printing and packaging segment. Later, Autoprint will be licenced by TYMI to manufacture their products in India.

India based Autoprint Machinery Manufacturers Pvt Ltd is the market leader in the printing and post printing machinery manufacturing and distribution segment for the past 21 years, having about 10,000 installations spread over 52 countries globally. While, Taiwan based TYMI Machinery Industrial Co Ltd has been in the paper converting machinery industry for the past 40 years. It specializes in coating and laminating machines suitable for the packaging segment. Autoprint looks upon this association to be a mutually beneficial for capturing the Indian coating market and exporting to a larger global market.

Sparkling jewel in the crown of Gujarat: Line O Matic

Uday C Patel of Line O Matic Graphic Industries receiving the ‘Pride of Gujarat’ award from chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi (Left).What name comes first in manufacturing of daily use exercise note books, copy paper wrapping, reel to sheet making, sheet counter, folding or just a ruling machine? Obviously Line O Matic. P&P editor SK Khurana very recently got a chance to visit their plant situated just opposite to Toyota showroom in GIDC Naroda Industrial Area, Ahmedabad.

One perhaps would require couple of days to be fully conversant with the manufacturing processes being adopted within three plants spread over the total area comprising around1,25,000 sq ft of Line O Matic. Having spent around just four hours, in their three plants with HT Hirpara, general manager, Line O Matic, here’s an update on the path of journey which Line O Matic has been walking since the year 1991.

In producing exercise note books, primarily the first step has always been the ruling on the sheets of paper as per the requirements and then converting these sheets into a book of pre-defined number of pages. This was altogether a manual process, resulting into short supply of exercise note books throughout the country until a little bit of automation was introduced in producing these books. It was all along slow process to produce these books wherein sheeting was required to be done out of a roll of paper. Ruling was the next process with hand feeding and that too individual sidewise.

The year 1988 witnessed the enormous possibilities in producing exercise notebooks when Line O Matic introduced wide range of equipments designed completely indigenously.

Then came the year 1991, when a revolution brought changes in the process and automation started taking the lead role, which resulted in handling of 7-8 tonnes of paper converting each day by the notebook producers. Since then, there has been no looking back. Under the guidance and motivational support of its promoter Uday Patel, Line O Matic continued achieving newer milestones. Be it automatic folding, counting or stitching offline or online, thread sewing, Line O Matic as of now offers around 20 models catering to the demand and affordability levels of small, medium or large entrepreneurs or established entities. Above all its market is also not limited to India, but beyond it…exporting to 35 countries. Having achieved 85 percent of market share in India, Line O Matic boasts of a massive installation base of 1,250 machines in India and around 350 machines overseas.

Line O Matic’s biggest and most prestigious moment came when they launched fully automatic on-line exercise note book making machine in which the paper roll is on the one end of machine and finished notebook is being delivered on the other end. This machine was demonstrated live in March 2007 and has now created waves all around. With the capacity of processing around 14 tonnes of paper every day (based on 24 hrs working), Line O Matic had already installed 75 such machines till end of 2012 and have a target to complete the mark of century this year.

Management team Line O Matic: Mukesh Sonani, Nirav Parikh, HT Hirpara, Uday C Patel and Swapnil Patel.Line O Matic, an ISO 9001:2008 certified company, is known for its efficient after sales service and while keeping an eye on the future, specially towards being innovative, have inducted young Swapnil Patel to their management team as chief executive. More recently, they have got the status of ‘recognized export house.’

With an investment of Rs 22 crore, Line O Matic had a turnover of Rs 82 crore in 2012-2013 and is expecting a turnover of Rs 120crore in the current financial year. Working 24×7, 360 days a year, Line O Matic is geared up to achieve newer milestones. The company has plans to expand their exports to 100 countries as against 35 currently. They are also eyeing to bring out a product range for spiral books.

Currently, the company is also outsourcing some of the fabrication jobs which they plan to have in-house, including powder coating. As a green initiative, the company produces 100 KW of solar power as of now and will soon be adding 200 KW capacity.

Ideas par excellence!

So that has been the story of Line O Matic focusing the journey of their activities related to exercise note book production reaching at the ultimate automations. But, yes there is yet another twist in the story — Line O Matic also never wanted that the early adopters of machines from them to remain at the same platform with not much of automation. In the year 2011, meeting the demand of such units, Line O Matic came up with the concept of ‘Half Machine’ i.e. Automatic Book Binding Machine, wherein just the feeding is manual and rest of the operation are covered with auto mode. The moment bunch of gathered sheets is placed on feeding table, it goes into wire-stitching unit, folding unit, square back pressing unit, cutting unit and finally delivery unit. With a maximum four-up production mode, this model can provide 50 pinning cycles per minute. In a way this is the machine which can offer high output with very less manpower.

Another proud product from Line O Matic stable is known as ‘copier paper pack’ producing machine. Thoughsimple products in look but requiring high precision in cutting and much bigger productivity brings a lot of challenges in designing and producing the machine. In this segment Line O Matic offers a machine which can produce copier paper packed reams as fast as 40 reams per minute i.e. 2,400 reams per hour and overall 60 tonnes every day. Nine such machines have already been installed and thus producing sizeable number of packs day in and day out.

So what enables Line O Matic to produce such quality precision engineered machines? Is it the skill of their engineers and other team members or the vision of their founder promoter Udaybhai? Yes it is the mixture of all and above. Udaybhai is a quick decision-taker and his bent of mind is always towards innovation. Their in-house concept of ‘Reverse Integration’ leads to total quality control and team spirit is prevalent across the company supported fully with their ultra-modern manufacturing facilities for components (2,400 Nos), vital or otherwise, with state-of-the-art new CNC, VMC, boring and plano from top brands like HASS (USA) and Hardford (Taiwan), etc.