In entrepreneurship, there is no sure-fire formula for success; it’s relentless endeavours which can bring one wherever the expectation stands. But there are some entrepreneurs who venture far beyond, steadily raising their aspirations and deepening roots to reach the next level of prestige. They utilise their unquestionable manifest abilities challenging sort of the limits; increasingly reveal their strengths to the optimum capacities and extract the best out of them with every new assignments; however evade pretending to have all and every solutions but the orders become certainly worth executing at their facilities; and know very well how much they can provide, what they can accomplish, and how to recognise, seize and ripe opportunities for execution, resulting the excellent outputs, along with converting difficulties or obstacles into winning potentials. Utility Printpack Pvt Ltd (UPPL) is one such company who is encouraged with all these boosting elements, ensuring to be pinnacled in the packaging industry. Specially, with their sole concept of quality, the company since inception has created indelible sign upon the entire industry, with their relentless efforts. SK Khurana, editor, Print & Publishing, who visited their state-of-the-art facility in Ahmedabad to appraise the striking appearance of their remarkable success, briefs.

Utility Printpack Pvt Ltd

Started as mere lamination company (under London Lamination) in the year 1981 with an investment of seventy five thousand rupees, Manoj Mehta has been able to bring Utility Printpack’s operation to the level of top of the line quality folding boxes made out of paperboard, rigid plastic film (PET, PP, PVC) and flute corrugated board company with the investment reaching over sixty crore rupees in Gujarat. Situated on the outskirt of Ahmedabad municipal limit area, Utility Printpack is now the name known all over for producing innovative, full of value addition and supplying with total consistency cartons to renowned brands of cosmetics, healthcare, snacks, food, milk products, etc segments from India and overseas. Companies like Fair & Lovely, Lakme India, Goran Pharma, Sesa Oil, Parag Milk & Milk Products, etc have started depending on Utility Printpack for most of their range of products. And why should they not, as ISO 9001-2000/14001 certified Utility is equipped with state-of-the-art equipments, using always top of the line consumables apart from the concept ‘total dedication towards customer satisfaction’ by not only Manoj Mehta, chairman of the company, but also by its managing director Mukesh Mehta and their gen next executive director Jinesh Mehta who completed his printing technology studies in UK.

Manoj Mehta, who can be termed as ‘one man army’ in Indian print industry, has always been seen on his tows for not just upgrading their own unit but his fellow printers as well. Having remained very active in Bombay Master Printers Association (BMPA) as well as for All India Federation of Master Printers (AIFMP), Manoj has been able to maintain a perfect balance between their day-to-day activities and affairs of the industry at large. He has been president of BMPA and AIFMP apart from holding other posts within the both entities. In fact, whole of the Indian print industry looks for his involvement in meeting and resolving any crucial issue relating to government regulations or suppliers community, Manoj can be truly called as ‘mentor’ for many in Indian print industry. Fully taking advantage of his prudent and sagacious contribution, Utility Printpack has come a long way with recently establishing a state-of-the-art facility spreading over 11,000 sq m area sophisticatedly equipped with cutting-edge equipments.

Mukesh Mehta, Manoj Mehta & Jinesh Mehta

Their printing machines from Heidelberg (Germany) enable printing up to six colours in one pass plus coating at a speed of fifteen thousand sheets per hour. For ensuring efficiency, these machines are CIP3 compatible and also have UV interdecks capabilities to print on metalised board, PET, PP and PVC materials. Single-colour sheet-fed gravure printing machine (with UV/IR) enables to print extremely deep and sharp images (especially with metallic inks) at very high speed. For surface enhancements, the company is equipped with hot-foil stamping machines with modern temperature control techniques to achieve a good sharpness of foiled linework; a high-speed flexo (chamber doctor) coating system enabling special coatings like gloss/matte, pearlescent, drip-off, glitter, abrasive, satin, leather, etc; and a number of offline cold-lamination machines providing gloss/matte effects and specialty laminates for the perfumes/cosmetics/luxury goods industries. For die-cutting and gluing, they have installed high-speed die-cutters and folder gluers from BOBST (Switzerland), enabling 3rd crease pre-folding and four-and-six corner gluing. All the above sophistication is supported by modern packing, palletisation and loading equipments for extremely worthy outer-packing - no matter what the transport mode may be. In pre-press segment, UPPL has an Esko SCOPE3 workflow which is CIP3 compatible and JDF enabled, backed by KONGSBERG sample making table allowing for cutting and creasing of samples in virtually no time. “Having a facility of in-house ink-matching system from Arets Graphics and Siegwerk Inks proves to be an asset to our working on day-to-day basis,” mentioned Manoj.

Conference-cum-product display room

Manoj’s statement, “my knack towards lamination and other post-press operations has brought me to today’s level” sounds perfect and can be seen in each and every carton, produced at their facility. “We do ship out around twenty lakh cartons of various sizes each day,” conveys Mukesh Mehta, managing director and three years younger brother of Manoj Mehta. It is indeed a remarkable figure which Utility Printpack has been able to achieve. “We do produce over 250 jobs of various cartons and convert around 550 tones of substrates per month. As on today, we utilise 70-75 percent installed printing capacity which otherwise has been planned to increase by installing one more machine Heidelberg CD 102, 6-colour plus coating machine very soon,” informed Mukesh enthusiastically.

Talking about re-locating of their production unit to Gujarat from Mumbai, the management of Utility Printpack has all the valid reasons which include free and fearless atmosphere for working, excellent road infrastructure and easy access to four alternative sea-ports ensuring interruption free shipments ultimately meeting all their delivery schedules. Even the charges per container basis are lower than that of Mumbai port. The turnover of Utility Printpack expected in this financial year to reach Rs 60 crore as against Rs 44 crore previous year. However, Manoj is upbeat to take the annual turnover of Utility Printpack to Rs 100 crore in next three years and then to reach a bracket of Rs 300 crore in five years down the lane.

On the topic of product pricing, Manoj was fully apprehensive that they always win the contracts over the quality factor rather than just pricing. Utility does not indulge in cut throat competitive price market segment, they rather prefer to have smaller volume contracts but with high value product. This quality factor brings them lot of internal satisfaction apart from prestige amongst print-buyers. Utility to their credit has always been award winners in all the competition they entered into. Their reception area full of such awards placed in the shelves is a testimony to this. Utility has been the only Indian packaging production company winning the World Star Award consequently for five years, from World Packaging Organisation (USA) for excellence in packaging.

a pair of production work horses producing excellence

Remembering good old days, Manoj goes back to the year 1978 when he completed his graduation from Bombay University and diploma in printing from JJ School of Art in 1981 and acknowledges his appreciation for some of his classmates belonging to printing community for having motivated to take up post printing operation as his profession which eventually brought him to this level. However, burning mid night oil has always been on his cards which they are still continuing. Manoj put in himself endless number of hours in every aspect of operation, while Mukesh handling production generally spends 15/16 hrs everyday with productive team members which numbers to around eighty individuals (apart from contract team members). Jinesh, on the other hand, handling around eighty customers from India and overseas, keeps himself stuck to his laptop till precisely midnight as his overseas customers are online chatting with him on one or the other jobs. As Jinesh mentions, “The export of printed material is not that easy as it looks upfront.” Showing his laptop presentation, he cautions printers community to be very serious on the matters of price quoting keeping in mind host of variation taking place while the jobs come in progress which include: increase in consumable costs, freight, delays and consistency parameters.

Team Utility indeed believes in total dedication and their chairman Manoj Mehta, who is firm believer in Vastu apart from lord Krishna mythology and a God fearing person, follows fair dealings by all means. Visiting Utility’s production facility via their administrative office looks like entering temple of Krishna. Each and every wall of their cabins does have such pictures framed nicely apart from their parents’ pictures, which probably is the source of inspiration to each one in Utility Printpack.

Ultimately, surging with all these strengths, Utility Printpack is constantly spreading its feathers all over serving huge clientele spanning across France, Spain, USA, UK, Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Russia, South Africa and the Gulf countries, apart from domestic market, for a plethora of industries, with strategic collaboration with few overseas and Indian companies such as Conpax Niverka Verpakkingen (The Netherlands), leading Dutch packaging converters serving mainly the food and confectionery industries; and Grafica Zannini (Italy) – Europe’s leading packaging converter serving mainly the pharmaceutical industries. Along with domestic offices in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata, the company also has its offices in US, UK and South Africa. A new flocking facility to be established in Mumbai with investment of six crore rupees in association with Uni Flockage (a French company) is in the pipeline. “Burgeoning with our all strengths, we look forward to be the leader with global repute in providing innovative and fit-for-purpose packaging solutions thereby benchmarking high-quality standards and maintaining a world-class culture of strategic growth, stemming from striving professionalism,” concluded Manoj, showing overwhelming spirit of undying commitment to the packaging industry, which may be the essence of success what Utility has marked so far.

Quality Instruments at Utility taking care of precision in a big way