S Chand Group Press: perhaps the biggest press engaged in book printing

-Relies mostly on used machinery
Himanshu Gupta, MD, S Chand Group shares why he relies heavily on second owned machines, in conversation with Varsha Verma. When you talk of textbook publishing in India, S Chand is amongst the top five players in India. For their printing needs, they have their own printing presses in two locations – Rudrapur and Sahibabad, which makes it perhaps the biggest press in the country engaged in book printing.

The press is well equipped with all machines, ranging from pre-press to press to post press equipments as well. “The post press process is fully automated as well,” shares Himanshu Gupta, Managing Director, S Chand Group.

“Each press has a capacity to churn 80-90 tonnes of paper every day. So, in season time, we are able to produce, finish and pack 2-2.5 crore books a month,” he adds.

The press prints books for inhouse publishing house. “We do not take any outside jobs. We print the books for our own S Chand Publishing brand as our consumption is very high. We need to churn atleast 23,000-25,000 tonnes paper every day and 75-80% of our requirement is fulfilled by our in-house press. In lean months, we convert 30,000-40,000 tonnes of paper per day,” he said. “So, we are able to utilize 100% of our capacity. We have 12,000 SKUs and books have to come out on time. In season, we run three shifts a day for six months (October-March) while in lean months, we run one shift a day.”

More recently, the company has taken over Chhaya Prakashani and to meet the increased printing need, they have gone for expansion. “We have added two new presses – one is in Rudrapur which is 560mm twin tower Orient press from TPH, which has a capacity to print 32 pp 4-colour pages at 18,000-20,000 prints per hour. Another machine we installed is TSK machine from Japan, with 30 stations, 24 binding clamps and online trimmer. It can convert books at a speed of 10,000 books per hour. We believe we can take out 80,000-100000 books per day on this machine. This will enhance our finishing efficiencies a lot,” shares Himanshu. “Last year, we had a capacity of churning 70,000-80,000 tonnes of paper, this year it has increased to 100,000 tonnes. We hope that we will be able to add 20,000- 30,000 tonnes more very soon.”

Besides, for post press operations, they have three more lines – Kolbus, Wohlenberg and TSK. “These machines have PUR system as well,” he adds.

S Chand Press is fully equipped with second hand machines and on asking the reason why they go for such machines, Himanshu replied that the life of these printing machines is 20-25 years and if they purchase a machine which is 8-10 years old, it is still efficient while being cost-efficient for another 10-15 years and since they do all inhouse production, they do not need to showcase that they have new machines at the press.