Indian industry discusses packaging trends at IIP workshop

The event attracted more than 50 professionals from the packaging and printing industry.

Prominent speakers at the session included: NC Saha, IIP director; Deepak Manchanda, a consultant covering package design and development; Arun HS, solution architect for South Asia at Esko Graphics India; BS Kampani, president and managing director of Toyo Ink India; Rakesh Shah, managing director of Windmöller & Hölscher India; Utsab Choudhauri, senior vice-president for liquid inks at DIC; Gaurav Chadha, business development manager at HP Indigo; and Parag Bagade, manager of technical services in South Asia and South Africa at Avery Dennison.

Manchanda opened the session with a presentation on recent trends in modern consumer pack design. He highlighted the changes that packaging has been through in recent years and gave examples of some prominent FMCG products that have been consumed for many years, and said: ‘Winning organizations use high-grade packaging finish to produce champion products.’

Manchanda also noted that sustainability makes business sense, it is just wrapped up in environment issues. ‘We recognise sustainability as a key issue but we are not doing enough. We have cost pressures but not enough pressure from regulatory bodies to implement sustainable practices.’

Kampani said: ‘According to the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), India has about 2,000 packaging standards but only 140 are mandatory to follow.’

Established in 1947, BIS is a national standards body responsible for promoting and nurturing standards movement in India.

‘Some companies such as Indian Tobacco Company (ITC) have started the green movement and started reducing wastage; but nothing has happened on a national level,’ Kampani added.

‘Rag pickers are paid by the weight of waste they collect,’ Manchanda continued. ‘Glasses and metals are being picked because rag pickers get paid more for them. But sachets are light in weight and need to be collected in considerable amounts for them to weigh enough. Brand owners need to get involved and take initiative to reclaim plastic waste.’

The discussion was followed by an interesting presentation by NC Saha who spoke on package design and its influence on the marketing of consumer goods. He said: ‘9,000 products go to the market every day. Packaging is a silent salesman. Horlicks, one of the health drinks sold in the Indian market, has been changing its packaging for the last five years.

‘It has to continuously evolve packaging to exist in the market. Retaining market share is a critical issue for many brands.’

Saha pointed out that a lot of innovation is happening on caps and closures of packaging to make it more convenient for customers. Citing the example of Coca-Cola’s evolving packaging design over a period of time, he stated that managing risks through such projects is critical.

Talking of recent trends in printing and packaging, Kampani noted that Smithers Pira has forecasted that digital print for packaging will more than double from 6.6 billion USD in 2013 to 14.4 billion USD in 2018. ‘The Indian printing industry, growing at a rate of 12 percent per annum, comprises more than 250,000 big, small and medium printers,’ said Kampani. ‘The current annual turnover of the industry is more than eight billion USD (50,000 INR crore).’

Bagade also referenced Smithers Pira and its The Future of Digital Printing for Packaging to 2018 study, and said that analog packaging will grow by 28 percent in the 2008-18 period, while all digitally produced material will increase by 375 percent. Digital printing is well established in label production, where electrography and inkjet enjoy growing shares of market value – these are forecasted to reach over 27 percent in 2018. Although the unit price of digital output is currently much higher than the analog alternative, there will be significant reductions in this unit price in coming years.

These are predicted to accelerate after 2014 as higher performance digital presses enter the market.

Bagade said: ‘Global label demand (across all technologies) is expected to reach more than 50 billion sq m by 2015.’