Jandu’s 3rd generation inducted, initiates makeover!

Jandu’s 3rd generation inducted, initiates makeover!

Prabhjot Singh Jandu is the third generation of Jandus! His grandfather Baldev Singh Jandu set up his maiden venture Jandu Engineering Works from humble beginnings in 1972, operating from a 100 square foot rented premises with just one lathe machine that he was operating himself and grew it to become the most prominent supplier of coating and laminating plants in India. His son Gurdev Singh later joined him in business to help his father to further the growth. Their story written by the author in 2013 and also carried by leading print magazine Printweek India,  is already there on the blog https://harveersahni.blogspot.com/2013/01/baldev-singh-jandujandu-coaters-create.html This was at a time when his grandson Prabhjot was still in school. With time, it was felt that there is a need to upgrade equipment in terms of technology and automation, together with expanding the business in terms of size, planning, service and administration. When Prabhjot finished his studies, he joined the enterprise and spent a year or so in training before starting to take decisions, it was like a dose of fresh youthful energy in the company. He is the 3rd generation Jandu to be inducted who is now initiating a complete makeover!

Prabhjot Singh Jandu completed his education with a B.Tech. Mechanical engineering from Amity University followed by business training at the same institution. As a part of that training, he was sent to Adelphi University New York for six months and then to Birkbeck, University of London, England for another six months. On return in 2020, at the young age of 22 years, he joined the family enterprise Jandu Engineering Works and was handed over the responsibility of uplifting the company branding and to take up marketing aggressively. Once he got settled, in order to make component inputs consistent to standard specifications, he moved on to look after purchasing and improving infrastructure to build plants with improved performance of their coating and laminating equipment.

He is now taking it upon himself to create plants that were not only great in terms of aesthetics but also excelled in running at higher speeds with increased automation. Prabhjot endeavors to gradually move away from the basic market that they were catering to and transform his company to cater to the higher end of customers for coating and laminating plants that can make specialty coatings and curing with precision under controlled conditions. He plans to launch coaters for new and innovative products. To make their plants more sustainable they have managed to design and supply equipment that has reduced wastages, with lower manpower and less dependence on operators. For better after sales service, he is introducing remote access so that production downtime of customers is substantially reduced. They now have the capability to access the plant at customer’s premises through internet and diagnose the problem and provide solutions. This has helped them with providing service to their export customers as when they provide internet connectivity, the Jandu service team can troubleshoot and support. They are already implementing real time data access from the plant in production for better and more accurate coatings. Servo drives with software support from Siemens are incorporated for demanding customers. Better tension controls provide uniformity of coatings and smoother run ability. As for providing inline inspection and precision control for silicone coatings starting at 0.30 GSM (gram per square meter) they are ready with the technology but await the right customer who will invest in such a high-end system for their silicone coater. Jandu Engineering Works under Prabhjot’s guidance have started to follow industry 4.0 guidelines.

Earlier, to increase their outreach in the industry, almost all business came to them by reference from existing customers or friends. Prabhjot is making changes and has indulged in extensive marketing and brand promotion. Jandu’s emails are not plain text now and have transformed to well-designed ones and are informative. Their website is up there on the first page when a prospective customer is looking for coaters and laminators. They regularly exhibit at label and packaging exhibitions; in fact, their last international presence was at Labelexpo Europe 2023 in Brussels where it was seen, all three generations manning the booth.

Jandu’s initial growth in the label industry was due to the earliest label printing press that they produced, narrow web CI flexo, but they have now found immense success in building coaters and laminators for the self-adhesive label and other converting industries. Their label printing press manufacturing business is now a very small part of their operations, they are in the process of contemplating either to improve and upgrade their presses or just keep concentrating on coating equipment. There present range has expanded to offer multiple types of converting equipment besides label presses which include coating and laminating machines for; silicone coating and self-adhesive labelstock, specialized coated products, thermal paper, sublimation paper, solar coatings, medical tape coatings, Barrier coatings, PLA coatings, pattern coatings and car wrapping, etc. They also have strong demand for slitting machines as it is necessary equipment for the coating and laminating lines. With experience, Jandu Engineering Works can help new entrants in the coating industry for specialized products with technology, sourcing and other details. They keep acquiring the latest information from suppliers of chemicals and specialized coatings in contact with them who are promoting their technical coatings and advise the processes to be followed. Jandu believes in sharing information with their existing customers.

Prabhjot is happy that the company has grown  60% to 70% since his joining. When he joined their silicone coating line was running at 250 meters per minute and adhesive coating at 100 meters per minute. Now after upgradation the silicone coating runs at 350 meters per minute and after more design changes it is expected to increase to 500 meters per minute and adhesive coating can now run at 180 meters per minute with much improved drying system. Proudly he says, “their earlier customers used to look for basic machines at low prices and now after I explain to them the benefits of the newer technological changes in our equipment, they are ready to invest in the expensive advanced versions of our equipment.” Ninety percent of their customers repeat their orders as proof of their acceptability. Their penetration into the market segment they operate in is more than 80%. While the number of coaters being sold now may be a little less but in terms of value it is much more, almost doubling their turnover because of the sale of advanced equipment to a higher market segment.

Prabhjot is ambitious and with active mentoring and support from his grandfather Baldev Singh Jandu and father Gurdev Singh, he wants to grow the company at a faster pace and endeavors’ a 50% growth in revenue per year. When he joined the company in 2020 Jandu Engineering Works was already operating from a 25000 square feet shopfloor, which has now expanded 60,000 square feet despite the pandemic slowdown. The Jandu family is now looking for about 3 to 4 acres of land for further expansion. The total workforce employed when Prabhjot joined was 70 and has now increased to 120 people. In the last 3 years they have sold around 40 coating lines up to 2-meter width for various applications employing diverse coating methods like air knife coating, 5 roll silicone coating, bar coating, gravure, adhesive coating, etc. These lines have the capability to coat at a speed up to 350 meters per minute. Jandu coaters have been exported to 17 countries so far.

Written by Harveer Sahni Chairman Weldon Celloplast New Delhi January 2024

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Labels on the move-growth in India-2018

Labels on the move-growth in India-2018
Fifty years ago, 80% of India lived in villages.
 
People are moving from villages to cities to experience the modern-day city life as they see on TV and internet. 





 
The scenario has transformed over the years. As a result of ongoing urbanisation, the urban population in India has now grown from 19.4% in 1968 to 33.5% in 2017. The shift has a direct impact on the consumption of household goods, as daily needs in city dwelling are obviously different and more than that in villages. More so due to the impact of a growing rate of literacy level which is the percentage of people aged 15 and above who can read and write having increased to over 72% percent from 40.76% in 1981. People in the working age group 15-64 years has escalated to 66.2%, from a level of 55.4% in the last 50 years. In 2017 the median age of the country, which is half of the people to be younger than this age and other half older, was estimated to be 27.9 years. In a country of 1.32 billion people a growing need for household goods or consumer goods also referred to as FMCG or “fast moving consumer goods” means there is an ever-growing huge demand for labels and packaging that are a part of the consumables they buy.

 

According to a report in The Economic Times dated May 01, 2018, consumer products market grew
13.5% in the Financial year 2018, with eight of 10 leading companies posting double-digit value growth, FMCG being the 4th largest segment of the economy. Online sales of consumer goods is also seeing an enormous rise as number of online users is poised to cross 850 million by 2025. According to a report by marketing research firm “eMarketerOnline” retail sales in India are expected to grow by 31% this year to touch $32.70 billion, led by e-commerce players Flipkart, Amazon India and Paytm Mall. Retail market is estimated to reach US$ 1.1 trillion by 2020, up from US$ 672 billion in 2016 further expected to boost revenues of FMCG companies to 104 billion US Dollars. The data herein mentioned indicates a definite, constant and escalating demand for labels and packaging.

 

 

Indian Label industry has been witnessing challenging time since demonetisation of currency and later due to implementation of GST. While these measures may be beneficial for the industry at large, yet they slowed down the trade impacting margins and revenues. With capacity growth already committed by existing label companies who had already placed orders for new equipment and by those entering the segment in this period, slow down impacted adversely the positive sentiment in label industry. The Label printing and converting equipment was being upgraded globally by machine manufacturers to achieve efficiency in production, reducing wastages, producing to economies of scale and was becoming more expensive. An industry that was used to a quicker ROI (Return on Investment) and better margins found the situation challenging, decided to be cautious and held-back investing decisions. While the economic parameters of growth as mentioned in the earlier part of this article were on the move all the time, a pause or back stepping for two years created a gap that has resulted in now a positive situation whereby new investments to increase capacity are being made. However still, label printers are apprehensive that this sudden indulgence may result in over capacity, promote unhealthy competition resulting in lower margins and make servicing of loans a little difficult. Despite this the positive sentiment in the label industry is evident as those who have excelled are committed to expand and maintain their position.

 

 

Change is the only permanent in a growing scenario, also stagnation leads to deterioration so one has to keep improving, innovating and expanding to remain in reckoning in a vibrant colourful industry. The label industry, much to the discomfort of the existing peers of the industry is seeing a lot of investment from the sheetfed offset printers. The sheet offset industry is used to big time investments in equipment and voluminous sales justifying their lower margins with massive turnovers. They were content with ever growing toplines, yet when the bottom lines needed strengthening labels appears to be a solution. While this would not add much to the top line but would surely contribute positively to their bottom lines. In a conspicuous effort to make their balance sheets look more presentable, it seems the offset printing industry is becoming indulgent in labels. It is for this reason we see label exhibition stalwarts Tarsus targeting the offset printers for their upcoming Labelexpo India. This is much to the discomfort of existing label industry constituents as it would add to the intense competition bringing pressure on already depleting margins in terms of percentage.

 

 

The label demand in India continues to grow and investments in label printing and converting equipment is on the rise. Though not much authentic data is available, yet the author based on experience and time spent in the industry has attempted to reach a reasonable size of the market. There are about 1000 label manufacturing companies in India. These include very small and big plain label, barcode label and product label manufacturers both in roll and sheet, spread all over India. The number of machines that each of these companies possess varies from just one machine to multiple machines, in many cases the machines installed are in double digits. On a very modest estimation if I assume an average of just two machines per label company, the total comes to 2500 label converting machines. The number of rotary machines announced in media in the recent past as installed in India over the years till now by leading label suppliers like Mark Andy, Gallus, Nilpeter, Omet, Bobst, Edale, MPS, Weigang, Orthotec, etc. coupled with those supplied by local manufacturers like Multitec 200 machines, RK label 150 rotary plus 600 flatbeds, Jandu 135, Alliance, Webtech and others, is well over 1500. Now if we add the used machines, the intermittent and other flatbed/rotary options, the figure is definitely over 2500. Working backwards for converting capabilities with realistic downtime, the per capita consumption of labelstocks is well beyond 1 square meter.

 

 

Calculating quantities of label stock manufactured from the number of coaters installed with Labelstock manufacturers we have, according to the author’s personal estimation, Avery Dennison is leading the pack and SMI following, together they account for over 40% of the production in India with almost 48 Crore or 480 million square meters per year. According to Jandu Engineers, who have been the main coater laminator supplier to the unorganised sector, they have till date installed 150 adhesive coating lines in the country. While Jandu asserts that his coaters run at 100 meters per minute but for a realistic estimation their speed with down time has been considered at 50 meters per minute. Added to this is the production coming from numerous Hotmelt coaters installed and together with the stock lots used, the total again justifies the 1 square meter per capita usage. Another evaluation done with base consumption that most in the industry had agreed at 0.25 square meter in the year 2003. Applying a year on year growth rate of just 10%, this year we cross the 1 square meter per capita usage. The estimation is the author’s personal estimation only, many of the industry peers may not agree with the author’s estimation yet it appears that we have come a long way in the last 20 years. The self-adhesive label production and consumption in India all including roll, sheet, stock lots etc. this year seems to have reached a whopping 1.30 billion square meters!!!

 

 

Written by Harveer Sahni Chairman Weldon Celloplast Limited New Delhi India September 2018