Omet Open House at Pragati!

A game changing event, Package printers prove so with their presence.

India’s leading package printing companies converged to the scenic Ista hotel in Hyderabad for the half day conference preceding the “Omet Open House” at Pragati pack. 105 delegates signed in, and they were the virtual “who is who” of the Indian package printing and label manufacturing companies! The event was organized by Omet’s exclusive agent in India, New Delhi based, Weldon Celloplast Limited in partnership with Esko, Dupont, Martin Automatic and VeePee Graphics. Material sponsors who contributed to the success of the event are ITC, Kurz and Siegwerk.

Opening the conference proceedings, Harveer Sahni Managing Director of Weldon welcomed the guests and expressing his gratitude to Pragati Pack administration said, “The magnanimity of Narendra Paruchuri, his illustrious family and team is evident. His hospitality to fellow members of the industry remains unsurpassed. It exhibits the commitment of all these people to complement growth of the printing industry. The heritage of philanthropy passed on to his next generations by the patriarch of the family Shri Hanumantha Rao is evident.” Esko is a global supplier of integrated solutions for packaging, sign and display finishing, commercial printing and professional publishing. Esko products and services help customers raise productivity, reduce time-to-market, lower costs and expand business and improve profitability. Ganpathy Thillai, application expert, Esko Artwork, Singapore spoke on, “Recipe for High Definition Flexo- Matching, Offset and Gravure Quality. Dupont is one of the most important providers of imaging technology. DuPont works with printers and converters to determine which system is best suited for their printing needs and capabilities. While Jagdish Kumar, Regional Director Asia Pacific Dupont, talked about emerging trends in flexographic printing, Mr. Guruaj Kirsur, Sales Specialist, Dupont India spoke on and lesser wastage, shorter make ready period and explained the concept of flat-top-dots in HD flexo. Paolo Grasso, International Sales Manager, Omet Srl, enlightened the audience on Omet Varyflex’s position as an alternative for the package printer. He explained the capability of the press to print and decorate, from 12 micron film to 700 micron board in a single pass. David Ho, International Sales Manager, Martin Automatic Inc., headquartered in Rockford, Illinois, USA, a leading designer and manufacturer of web handling equipment for the printing, packaging and converting industries spoke on Martin’s line of innovative products includes automatic splicers, non-stop rewinders, tension control and web guiding systems to reduce wastages. Hemant Paruchuri, Director Pragati Pack, spoke to the audience about his experience with the path breaking technology in their unit. He was all praise and said "It is a complementary technology for printers with short runs that are repetitive in nature". The Omet team exhibited their commitment to the Indian market. Antonio Bartesaghi, President Omet and Marco Calcagni, General Sales Director of Omet were present with their team of engineers.

Leading printers that included Manoj Mehta Immediate past president All India Federation of Master Printers, Nikhil Borkar of Borkar packaging, Aditya Patwardhan of Manohar packaging, Mahendra Shah of Renault, Chandan Khanna of Ajanta Packaging, Sanjeev Sondhi of Zircon India, Arvind Sekhar and Priyata Raghavan of Sai Packaging, Gautam Nerkar of Unique Offset, representatives from Manipal Press, Security Printing press, Webtech, Arunodhya Packaging and a host of others were present and seen participating in the question answer session.

The half day conference was followed by visit to the Pragati pack. The visitors who came to see this landmark event were in awe of the capabilities of the Omet Vary flex, folding carton press. They saw the press capability to register without human intervention as also a change of job in just 4 minutes. Alongwith the Omet Varyflex, also displayed was the flying splice by Martin Automatic at over 100 meters per minute without the machine slowing down or loss of registration. The main features of Omet Varyflex installed at Pragati are a flexographic platform machine with the facility for rotogravure, cold foil and a silk screen cassette in every position of the press. Those are main added values which go along the high quality of the flexo UV printing and in-line converting. In such configuration the press can perform, all in one pass, those high added value jobs which would otherwise request several off-line passes to be completed. It is therefore possible to print, reverse print, foiling, overprinting, metalizing, relief printing and converting, all in one go. The printers were a satisfied lot. The event ended with a networking dinner to share their experiences, enjoy the visit to Hyderabad and take back happy memories.