LMAI hosts fourth conference

The conference commenced with Sandeep Zaveri, the president of LMAI welcoming the delegates followed by the lamp lighting ceremony. During the conference, LMAI honored Harveer Sahni, chairman of Weldon Celloplast with an award for lifetime support of the Indian label industry.

Pankaj Bhardwaj, senior director and general manager, Label and Graphic Materials South Asia, Avery Dennison, gave the keynote address and highlighted the growth opportunities for label printers.

This was followed by a special address by Lisa Milburn, managing director, Labelexpo Global Series. Talking of label industry in various regions across the world, Milburn highlighted some of the fastest growing markets in the world, with China growing at 10 percent year-on-year, India at eight to nine percent, Southeast Asia at seven percent and Africa at more than six percent,

The next morning, Jitesh Mehta, director product management, Label and Graphic Materials, South Asia Pacific and Sub Saharan Africa at Avery Dennison, spoke on the need of simple innovations for businesses to grow profitably. ‘Quality ideas and a highly effective front-end of innovation is key to success. Collaboration is very important to make it happen,’ he said.

Ajay Mehta, managing director at SMI Coated Products, spoke on market trends in the Indian label industry. He said that the industry needs to change its way of working. ‘It is important to earn money so we all can continue to grow. We need to change the way we look at our costing and run our businesses efficiently for our benefit.’

Echoing similar thoughts, A Appadurai, country manager for HP Indigo and inkjet presses, India and Sri Lanka, started his presentation by asking delegates if the Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the world, would have looked so beautiful if King Shah Jahan, who had it made, floated a reverse auction for it? ‘This is the foremost problem with the label industry. The milk prices in India have doubled in the last two years but your pricing has gone down. When the input cost goes up, the selling price of your label should also go up. No one in the industry is following the basic principle,’ he said.

Pawandeep Sahni, director at Weldon Celloplast, urged label printers to look at themselves as specialists for specified categories such as pharmaceutical or automobiles, amongst others. ‘Converters must look at products the way a consumer looks at it to improve consumer engagement. Focus on product and service to reach a mark of 1000 crore INR (about 156 millionUSD) mark,’ he said.

Discussing the future of the label industry, Federico D’ Annunzio, strategic marketing director at Bobst web fed business unit, said that the entire printing process including color matching, which is today a manual process, will be done digitally using software. ‘Your perception of quality in the next five years will be driven by data.’

Other sponsors at the conference were AB Graphic, artimelt, BST eltromat, Dragon Foil, Dupont Advance Printing, Flint Group, Gallus, Hubergroup India, Insight Print Communications, Kurz, Loparex India, MacDermid, Mark Andy, Monotech Systems, Martin Automatic, Multitec, Omet, Siegwerk, tesa Tapes, Unique UV & Light and UPM Raflatac.

The conference ended with a special round table event that was an opportunity for all sponsors to have a personal session with printers for understanding and responding to their requirements and challenges. Further, a table-top exhibition ran alongside the three days of the conference.

Read a detailed report in L&L issue 5, 2017