Peru sees packaging growth

Peru has enjoyed South America’s highest GDP growth in recent years, and the country’s packaging sector has been reaping the benefits. James Quirk speaks to Juan Pablo Patiño, manroland Latina’s general manager, about the local market.

Peru has been one of Latin America’s recent success stories, seeing rapid GDP growth over the past few years thanks to a booming export market and free trade agreements within South America and, more recently, with the US

According to data from The World Bank, the country’s GDP growth peaked at 9.8 percent for 2008, while the figures for 2010 (8.78 percent) and 2011 (6.92 percent) were also impressive. 2012 is forecast to see 5.5 percent growth.

Peru’s rapid export market growth has been facilitated by free trade agreements between regional trade blocs CAN (which brings together the Andean countries of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru) and Mercosur (made up of the Southern Cone nations of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) in 2004; and between Peru and the US in 2009.

Unsurprisingly, Peru’s packaging and labeling markets are reaping the benefits of the increasing quantities of products being packaged locally and then exported. The country has seen a surge in installations of high-quality printing and converting machinery from leading international brands, as local operations spring up to take advantage of the growth.

One such manufacturer that has witnessed this recent shift in the Peruvian market is manroland Latina, which set up an operation in Lima, the country’s capital, three years ago following the break-up of its distribution relationship with Ferrostaal. Since 2010, manroland Latina has also represented Danish label press manufacturer Nilpeter in Peru, and as such has been well positioned to take advantage of the growth in the local packaging and labeling markets. Further representation deals are in place for the country with Lamina System, a Sweden-based manufacturer of sheet-to-sheet laminating, folding and gluing equipment, and Brausse, a supplier of die cutting and creasing machinery headquartered in Canada.

According to Juan Pablo Patiño, manroland Latina’s general manager, the company has installed three manroland sheet-fed machines for packaging in the last six months, and aims to complete four installations of Nilpeter label presses by the end of the first quarter of 2012.

Patiño sees a shift in the profile of the clients and in the technical specifications of the machines being installed, reflective of the market’s increasing capacity and quality requirements and of the number of companies moving into the sector for the first time.

‘In Peru, many printing companies working in the commercial or editorial sectors are moving into the labeling and packaging market – be it flexible or rigid – where nowadays there is much more potential for growth,’ he says.

One of the recent installations is at Indupack, which last year installed its second manroland machine, a Roland 204 sheet-fed offset press with a 52 x 74cm sheet size, dedicated to carton printing. The addition of the new machine has helped the company to double its production – which is dedicated to mass-consumption products headed for export such as tea and alcoholic beverage Pisco – and forced a move to larger premises.

  When the partnership with Nilpeter was signed in 2010, there were two of the Danish press manufacturer’s machines in Peru. Over the next few months that figure will rise to six, with four installations currently underway. In an example of the sector attracting companies from other industries, Ychiformas, a printer of continuous forms, has purchased a seven-color Nilpeter FB 2500 with cold foil as it moves into label production for the first time.

‘Rotary offset for form printing and flexo for label production are very different technologies, but the continuous forms industry is losing ground and the company was attracted by the growth in the labeling and packaging sector,’ says Patiño.

Peru is seeing two major trends in the packaging and labeling sector, according to Patiño – the increasing desire for value-added products using features such as varnishing and foiling; and a move towards shorter runs with ever more product variation.

‘Between manroland and Nilpeter, we have ranges of machines that can cater to both these trends,’ says Patiño. ‘For example, even commodity products are increasingly looking for added value. And while gravure technology was widely used for long runs of these types of products, now flexo can offer this added value and allows for a gravure unit to be added as well.’

Pictured: Manroland is seeing an increase in installations of its sheet-fed offset packaging presses in Peru

This article was published in L&L issue 2, 2012