Aravali Printers takes a quantum leap with Heidelberg

Subhash, Sunny and Ajay Goel with the brand new Heidelberg CD 102 four colour press.One of the few printers to have a 32-page web press in India, handling a current magazine printing volume of over 8,00,000 copies per week, Aravali Printers looks towards a turnover of Rs 100 crore for 2011-2012 (presently around Rs 40 crore), with the installation of two new Heidelberg printing machines recently. With newspapers and magazines as their main target, they have four heatset and eleven coldset presses. The total print units at the company are 60, including 20 Heidelberg units.

Aravali Printers was founded by the MD of Rajasthan Patrika, late Karpoor Chandra Kulish, who also gave the company its name, denoting vastness. Branching out of Rajasthan Patrika, it started in partnership with the Patrika by the three other partners, Madan Lal Goel, Subhash Goel and Suresh Goel in the year 1984. Initially it catered to newspaper printing and later on converted to commercial printing. In the beginning, the setup included a whole set of machines of different makes including an RO 62, a couple of web machines, Heidelberg and a few more. With the starting of new unit, which was an acquisition of a running unit at Sahibabad, they increased their line-up with a couple of machines including two web units. Today, Aravali runs four units in and around Delhi. The printing story at Aravali started with book printing, which was initially for NCERT. They slowly added new and varied machinery to meet the diverse requirements of the Government and later added printing capabilities for non-government customers as well. The demand would be as diverse as printing on low quality harsh paper to imported hard cards.

The productions at Aravali have a whole variety of machines and equipment. It though had many Heidelberg machines printing for them for years; they all were second hand machines. Only two years ago, they decided to install a new Heidelberg press. Various things were worked out which included criteria like cost, speed, quality and technological upgrade. “We had seen that conventional machines could print up to 14 short/medium run sets in an eight-hour shift. We worked out the direct advantages in this field of installing a state-of-the-art Heidelberg machine capable of printing 25 to 30 sets in the same shift,” said Sunny Goel. The company is also installing another Heidelberg machine at the same location. The plan is to replace all the old machinery with new ones from Heidelberg.  In the prepress setup, Aravali has a CtP, two image setters and is planning to have a CtCP as well. “Though the equipment cost is more in case of CtCP as compared to CtP, the cost of the plates balances the equation in favour of the former,” said Sunny. As for MIS, the company is slowly moving towards it as they think times ahead would be more software dependent. Presently, a stock management software from CATS Infotech is in place at Aravali.

The printing at Aravali is at par with the best in the industry. Around ten percent of its turnover constitutes exports, but it looks forward to increase the exports share to around 40 percent. “Right from the quality, which has increased many folds, to marked improvements in make-ready – up to 15 percent, the new Heidelberg has put us ahead of times. Though there is no comparison with our older machines, I would still say it is a quantum leap, in terms of quality, speed and technological capabilities,” concluded Sunny.