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Combatting the more vicious Covid-2

The continuous wailing of ambulance sirens, send a chill down one’s spine, another loved one from somebody’s family, suffering from the impact of second edition of covid-19, is on the lookout for a hospital bed and the much-needed evasive supply of oxygen as life support. It is ironic that in today’s time of technological advancement many unsuspecting innocent human beings are losing a desperately fought battle for survival against a more vicious and fast spreading variants of corona virus. Medical infrastructures are crumbling under the huge volume of patients reporting infections. Vaccination program is struggling to meet targets that keep becoming difficult by the day, the government has opened registration of people for vaccination, but it is a gigantic task which presently at the very outset, means reaching out to over 50% of the total population of almost 1.4 billion people which would be about 70 million people spread across a large geographical terrain in 29 states and 7 Union territories. Recently a newspaper reported the registrations for vaccinations coming at the rate of 55000 per second! A bigger danger is that much of rural India which accounts for almost 65% of the total population (90million) was largely unaffected and now the virus seems to be creeping there as well. The problem is not only India, as in today’s time given the travel mobility of people from all walks of life and with their relatives spread around the globe with different natural and adopted nationalities, the present dangerous second phase of the pandemic is a global problem and unless checked, it may reach very scary levels impacting the world at large. The second wave is so vicious that it has impacted every other home. It is heart-warming to see that governments around the world understand the problem and are coming forward to cooperate with each other in combatting this menace. On the domestic front we see religious bodies, NGOs, industry and many others doing their bit to defuse the pain and anguish due to the impact of the pandemic. The Indian label industry is also taking steps to contribute towards the safety and wellbeing of their workforce and wherever possible contributing to the society as well.

Kuldip Goel

The author reached out to many leading label manufacturers to assess the level of infections in the two phases of covid and their reactions to combat the menace. The author, his most family members including both sons K D Sahni and Pawandeep Sahni, MD of Omet India Pvt. Ltd. and 4 employees in his company Weldon Celloplast Ltd. tested positive. Kuldip Goel president LMAI (Label Manufacturers Association of India) and Chairman/MD of Any Graphics NOIDA reported 25 of his team including 14 of top management along with his son Naveen went through the ordeal. He restricts himself from saying he helped his people during the hard time but prefers to use the word support instead. Besides ensuring the job security of his people, providing financial and medical support they even arranged counselling to almost 100+ people in bringing them out from depression. Kuldip along with his colleagues in board of directors of LMAI are already planning to import Oxygen concentrators for the needy. Abhay Datta Director UV Graphic Technologies where 4 people were infected including himself and his son, has prepared guidelines and implemented them for awareness and safe working within the business. He has developed UVC disinfection devices for articles to contain spread of corona. He is unhappy on how the government has dealt with the outbreak, he says, “It is a bad situation, really sad that the government has failed to control it.” Twelve persons including himself and his plant head in Anuj Bharagava lead Kumar Labels suffered infection, but Anuj went ahead and made a makeshift clinic with Oxygen & IV facility at his NOIDA factory. As also helping communities by enabling concentrators and oxygen cylinders. He too is concerned about the handling of the spread, “It is a terrible period for India, and humanity. We wish things were better anticipated and planned by the authorities. However still, we are all doing our best to help each other. Sad to see some people trying to profiteer by selling drugs and services in black” he says.

Nirav Shah

In central and west India there is a bigger concentration of label companies and there too most are impacted though some have succeeded in limiting the impact of the pandemic. LMAI honorary secretary and Director of Indore headquartered Pragati Graphics and Packaging has been deeply involved in arranging hospital beds, medicines, oxygen, oxygen cylinders, etc. for a lot of people from and around Indore. He has also arranged two oxygen concentrators which are being given to needy people. Commenting on the 25 people infected in his company he said, “To me the picture looks gloomy. The industry was slowly picking up as the demand was growing. This wave of pandemic has again brought the industry to its knees and the situation will become very bad if the wave of Covid does not recede soon.” Nirav Shah heading Letragraphix in Ahmedabad had to re-engineer his production plans to meet timelines and service his customers efficiently since 20-25% of his workforce got infected. He has stood by his employees in full even during lockdown and providing whatever support was needed. On the social front Nirav finds satisfaction from the fact that they have donated sanitisers, ration kits and food packets besides supporting an NGO called Karma Foundation on regular basis. He states that these are unpredictable times which have taught many lessons to everyone to get adjusted to a new normal of work culture and pray for the world to heal soon.

Vinod Vazhapulli of Skanem

Mumbai based Skanem India Pvt. Ltd. (Formerly Skanem Interlabels) a subsidiary of Skanem AS headquartered in Norway with presence in 8 countries also reported 15% to 20% of workforce as infected in its 4 sites within India. Vinod Vazhapulli Managing Director informed that the company has taken care of their employees by paying before time in full without any deductions whatsoever ever since the start of pandemic and supporting wherever help was needed. The company had them covered under the Insurance scheme with a coverage of Sum insured of Rs. 2 Lakhs especially for Covid by Skanem India, thereby ensuring that all their Medical and treatment expenses are taken care of under Cash less transaction schemes. Online counselling sessions / Yoga classes etc. were organized ensuring that any kind of anxiety or mental dis-order that would have developed due to the pandemic or extended lock downs are handled by experts, taking care of the mental wellbeing of their employees. As a social endeavor They have provided Medical aid , Food & PPEs to the Maljipada village where the Mumbai plant is, during the peak of Lock downs last year. Vinod says, “ there has been an impact of this outbreak on our Industry, the recovery had commenced but with this 2nd wave it is again pushed back to uncertain times”.

Raveendran

South India based Rajeev Nair CMD of Stallion Group informed that 25 % of their team including 5% from management were impacted, he is worried that the business that went down in the first phase of covid had started to recover is now again adversely impacted in the second phase. Raveendran of Seljegat in Sivakasi is thankful that they have been cautious with their workforce, so the infections were minimal, just two employees and his younger brother were impacted mildly and recovered. They have in place a strict protocol of checking temperature, oxygen levels and providing sanitisers. They also provide herbal immunity boosting tea to all workforce who must maintain safe distance and are divided into two shifts. Except for a week of lock down, they have been working right through and in fact are in 100% production. They provide separate buses for women and other workers making several trips to maintain distance and transport them to and fro safely. They have even invited government officials to study their systems that have helped in curtailing the infection. We see similar situation in J K Fine Prints Mumbai, Director Himanshu Kapur who is son of Surender Kapur the founder president of LMAI says, “We had just one infection between the two phases, we have given full financial support to our workers as also provided them and their families with masks, sanitisers and other needs” he further adds, “After the initial jolt, I now feel that label industry will not be so drastically impacted. We will see growth coming from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities who will patronise organised retail for their needs”.

Sandeep Zaveri of Total Print

The best response came from LMAI past president Sandeep Zaveri heading Total Print Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Mumbai, he says, “Between the two phases none in our company got infected due to strict norms maintained by us and supporting our team with full salaries and food needs” he adds, “I think God has created this for us all human beings to go slow, spend quality time with our near and dear ones”.

Many NGOs(Non-Government Organisations), religious bodies, companies and individuals are contributing in whichever way they can reduce the sufferings of people. Donations and help from these groups keep pouring in and exhibits the caring that emanates from these groups. However, in contrast we have reached a situation when politicians continue to play the blame game accusing each other for the sufferings of population, with their eyes on the next election and access to country’s coffers they are insensitive to the pain people are going through. Allowing election rallies and religious gatherings of hundreds of thousand people not following covid norms has contributed to the massive spread. The central government says state government is wrong and vice-versa while the innocent citizens gasp for that breadth which will come loaded with some oxygen so that they may still survive to be with their loved ones another day. It is so unfortunate that we talk of financial outlay of billions in our budgets yet a commodity like oxygen that is an imperative for survival has become a political point for our leaders blaming it on logistics. The pain and suffering do not end for the relatives of those who have lost their fight against covid and passed away, there is neither the means to take the bodies to cremation grounds nor the space to cremate them. Will residents of another developed country understand this kind of situation? All this while the needy yearn for that breadth which will decide if they exist the next day or not. Added to this the unscrupulous citizens who look at this as an opportunity to make more money, they make the Shylock in Shakespeare’s story “Merchent of Venice” appear as a reasonable person, he may have just asked for a pound of flesh from just one borrower, here these black marketeers are trading in oxygen, essential medicines and life support equipment to draw unreasonable profit from the lives of a suffering generation.

History will not and should not pardon such unethical persons who have no feelings that a grandparent, a parent, a spouse, a sibling or an offspring are so precious part that one yearns for them to be there always and losing them is not imaginable. Courts in India appear to be understanding the gravity of the situation but who will teach the politicians who are the executive running the country. It is not just watching on TV that people are suffering and dying, but it is now being felt and being experienced by all households largely. A friend, a relative, a business associate, a colleague or a loved one just vanishes losing out to the pandemic leaving a void and a hollow feeling whereby the tears have no place to go.

Written by Harveer Sahni Chairman Weldon Celloplast Limited New Delhi May 2021

Reproduction permitted by giving credit to author and link to blog http://harveersahni.blogspot.com

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“Evolving and shifting trends in self-adhesive labels”

In my early years when I worked for my parental company Weldon Sales Corporation established in 1939, manufacturing stationary products like Weldon Fountain pen inks and office glues besides a range of stationary products, I remember that we used to affix paper labels on glass bottles using water-based adhesives. Initially these were solutions of gum Arabic and later we switched over to starch based adhesives produced by us captively. These worked well on glass bottles or paper-based packaging, the only challenge was that we had to wait for the adhesive to dry before putting these into secondary or tertiary packs as the labels would shift if packed wet compromising the appearance of the product. The same issue was encountered by the beer industry which continues to face it, at least for some brands that still rely on adhesives that do not address this problem. Since glass packaging was heavy and was susceptible to breakages in transit the introduction of plastic HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) bottles came as a big relief at that time. HDPE that was invented in 1953, started being initially imported and later produced in India by Polyolefin Industries Ltd. a Mafatlal Group Company under license from Hoechst Germany, in the late 1960s. HDPE plastic bottles came as a big innovative development for the liquid packaging industry. When we at Weldon started using outsourced Plastic bottles, later manufacturing them in-house, labeling them brought fresh problems.

The labels affixed with water-based adhesives, on drying would fall off in transit or get wrinkled. This was because of the reason that HDPE is a low-energy polymer and for normal water-based adhesives to form a permanent bond is a problem. For some round bottles, we started using wrap-around labels as then the label would come around and get pasted paper to paper. It was during this period after 1965 that the earliest self-adhesive labels started being produced in India and in the 1970s their usage in the packaging of products started to increase. These labels would bond instantly, would not need drying and would not shift in packaging , also aiding the aesthetics so their usage spread quickly and widely. It was that time we at Weldon also shifted to self-adhesive labels or pressure-sensitive labels. The rest of the evolution of Self-Adhesive labels is history and is still an ongoing process.

Adhesives: Pressure-sensitive adhesive(PSA) labels is now one of the fastest growing segments in a world of diverse labeling technologies. It provides accuracy of clean labeling and options to use a variety of adhesives for application on different surfaces in most environments, including temperature, humidity, exposure to UV, etc. Advancements in products and their packaging require labels to perform in extreme and demanding parameters.

Some food and pharma products require the labels to perform at very low temperatures, typical are for ice cream, pharma and vaccines that require extremely low temperature for storage. Synthetic adhesives that are in use nowadays harden at very low temperatures and tend to fall off so must be formulated to withstand the application and storage conditions. These adhesive soften at high temperatures therefore signages and labels that must be used for outdoor in diverse environments, withstand UV light and heat build up due continuous exposure to sun also need adhesives specially formulated to perform for the duration of their lifetime. Direct PSA labels application on food products like fresh fruits and vegetables is now in use and labels must be certified safe for direct food contact and that they should not have adhesive or inks from which plasticizer may migrate into the product. Coming to labeling on low energy surfaces like HDPE bottles mentioned above, though the label sticks well but in these days of increased incidence of anti-counterfeiting, pilferage and tampering, the label with standard general purpose adhesive can be pulled off cleanly by an experienced hacker or counterfeiter. So, the adhesives are an important and integral part of evolving trends in self-adhesive labels. A lot of development has been done on these lines and continue to be taken up to produce special formulations that conform to the specific requirements.

Substrates and embellishments: As customers grow in numbers, segments, literacy, urbanisation and geographical spread, the packaging development managers are attempting to create innovations in partnership with label printers to woo the consumers, increase the shelf appeal of products and increase brand recalls.

Moving from simple label substrates like uncoated maplitho or uncoated woodfree paper, now the selection of substrate is as per the imagination or creative ideas of the label developers. The label face materials can be selected from a wide range of options available like semigloss paper, metallised papers or films, textured paper, various clear or opaque films, fabric, cork, lenticular films, holographic paper or films and anything that emanates out of a creative designer’s mind. As for embellishments, there was a time when either using a cast coated paper or a good varnish were the only options, but now a whole world of new ways to embellish labels has erupted. Using multiple printing technologies to get the best of every printing process, adding value to win customers and beat competition is becoming a necessity for printers. Today we see labels being made in-line in a single pass employing a combination of flexographic printing for spot colours or pantones, offset to create vignettes or skin tones, screen for higher deposition of ink, rotogravure to get the best results of metallic inks, cold foil, hot foil, using a variety of varnishes to create effects like textures, high gloss, matt, silk finish or just spot varnish, embossing and debossing to bring amazing results in the finished labels. We see printers create labels with raised effects like dew drops, print that seems to give the look and feel of wood and fruits with pulp, giving a natural effect. Adding further to the capabilities, now printers are employing digital printing either in combination as mentioned or as repass to do variable printing and or personalization. The options are getting to be limitless.

Security Labelling: Increasing number of instances of duplication, counterfeiting and pilferage has created a need for security to be made an important part of labeling.

Counterfeiting products is a problem not only limited to pharmaceuticals industry, but it also affects 5 to 7 percent of global trade. It has impacted other industries as well, such as electronics, automotive parts, spirits, consumer products and high-end cosmetics. Earlier security labels were only with security cuts incorporated at the time of die cutting, then specialized stocks with overt and covert features like the Void labels started being used followed by destructible labels. Holograms also have been largely employed and is now hologram production is a large segment of label industry. With development in pre-press and printing technologies printers use micro printing which is not visible to naked human eyes and other such printing methods used in printing currency to inbuild security in labels. Barcodes are also being largely employed to play an important role in security in labels besides aiding variable statutory information, track n trace information, inventory and logistical data. A very important development in recent times has been Intelligent labels that include near field communication (NFC) or radio frequency identification (RFID) to perform a wide variety of tasks. Integrating these capabilities with traditional labels is one of the most dramatic development in labeling.

Printing Equipment: The narrow web self-adhesive label manufacturing commenced in India in the first half of 1970s on small, about 4-5inches label presses imported from far eastern countries mostly from Japan at that time. These small narrow web presses that did block printing were extremely slow about 5 meters per minute but still did the printing and die cutting inline in a single pass, that was its USP.

It may appear strange to the younger printers of today that there were no drying arrangements in these presses. Printers would print and then hang the printed rolls of labels on a clothesline for drying before rerolling them on a core and sending to customers. Shop floors of narrow web label printers would look like washing yards referred to in India as “Dhobhi ghat”. The printing technologies with time went through continuous changes. The flatbed block printing made way for semi-rotary intermittent letterpress using polymer plates. With improvement in Flexo ink and plate technology, rotary label presses with central impression drum (CI Label Presses) found their way into print shops. These provided faster speeds at increased widths of 7 inches(180mm)-10inches(250mm) and as the buyers became more demanding on colours, speeds and performance, together with further evolution of prepress, advancements in plate making and registration controls, the CI narrow web label presses moved out making way for modular presses using water-based inks with hot air dryers. However, CI presses continued to be used for other applications like lami-tubes and mid-web flexible packaging. Label presses have over the years evolved to print wider web widths of 330mm, 430mm, 530mm and at last Labelexpo presses over 650mm were displayed. Printing speeds have also escalated to over 200meters per minute. In an evolving scenario of rising demands for perfection in print and printers facing challenges in reproducibility, colour variations due to viscosity changes in ink trays and set up wastage, were releived when UV inks, UV lamps for drying and short web path became a standard part of presses. The UV printing also enabled printing and converting filmic labels after addition of corona treaters inline to enhance print adhesion. Some label companies have of now reverted to include a combination of hot air and UV as some food products have witnessed migration of photo initiators in UV inks migrating into the food causing contamination, so the option to print with water-based inks comes in handy to service such requirements. LED UV also is being seen as replacement as there is energy cost saving and better as regards migration issues. Ideal solution maybe Electron Beam curing which is costly but that has still to be accepted by Indian label industry. There is hardly any installation with EB curing for production of narrow web labels in India.

Other evolutions that happened include label presses designed for quick change overs to enable a large number of jobs per day, servo drives to eliminate gears coupled with advanced vision camera systems to achieve perfect registrations in both machine and cross direction without human intervention, better matrix removal, web cleaners to eliminate pinholes and print aberrations, web turn bars to print both sides of the web along with the delam-relam function for enabling printing on back or the adhesive coated side of the web. Movable lamination stations and embellishing stations like foiling add value to the printed labels. Multiple die-stations to enable functions like embossing, debossing, slitting besides simple die cutting or sheeting have become a standard function demanded by high-end printing companies. Change of heavy magnetic cylinders was a cumbersome and time-consuming job requiring manpower and lifting arrangements. Now in a couple of minutes one can slide-out and slide-in a magnetic cylinder.

The pandemic that surfaced in end of 2019 and drastically impacted the whole world and made businesses suffer for all of 2020 and when we are hoping for it to taper off in 2021 providing relief to mankind, it has started to resurface. It has prompted the industry to re-engineer their working. The aim now is to work with less. Workflow management, increased automation, clean room manufacturing, inventory controls, effective management systems, etc. are the buzzwords that even smaller entrepreneurs understand and are making efforts to implement them. Automatic butt slicers/reel changing systems to achieve continuous 24X7 production when needed, waste management equipment sucking waste matrix right from the die cutting stage and shredding and inline inspection/colour management systems to reduce rejections which were earlier a preference of only a selected few, but these are now a part of standard equipment configurations envisaged commonly by Label printing companies planning expansion or planning new setup. The evolution and shifting of trends in self-adhesive labels have been an ongoing process and printers need to adapt the changes as they originate to stay fit, competitive and innovative.

Author’s footnote: Each parameter listed above and many other parameter’s like inks, special adhesives, coatings and machine design are subjects that are to lengthy to be accommodated into one article and need separate coverage.

Written by Harveer Sahni, Chairman Weldon Celloplast Limited, New Delhi-India April 2021

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My Pictorial walk through an amazing Labelexpo 2017!

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Labelexpo Europe 2017 at Brussels has been the biggest ever edition in the event's history so far. The show that is primarily dedicated to self adhesive labels industry has now evolved to different segments of labels and into the larger world of print packaging. Evidently the show will continue to become bigger in the years that follow. As per information from Tarsus, the show occupied nine exhibition halls to be 12 percent bigger than the previous edition in 2015. It hosted 679 exhibitors, including 198 new participants. There was 25 percent more working machinery demonstrated at the show, including a number of product launches. Labelexpo Europe attracted large delegations from Brazil, China, India and Japan, the show reported 37,724 visitors; an increase of 5.6 percent on 35,739 visitors to Labelexpo Europe 2015. There were a number of sales recorded on the show floor.

I reproduce here images from my pictorial walk through this amazing show and the events organised on the sides and attended by me.

The Omet Agents Dinner one day prior to Labelexpo

Harveer Sahni and Amit Sheth as Judges at World Label Awards

Judging in progress for World Label awards

Chinese Press Manufacturers Weigang, stand

With Mike Russel International Sales Director Mark Andy


Mark Andy/Rotoflex Stand

With Dirk Schroder, Sales Manager E+L displaying their intelligent inspection system

With Pankaj Bhardwaj Vice President and General Manager, South Asia Pacific and Sub Saharan Africa of Avery Dennison, India at their stand.

At the The Label Industry Global Awards Night and Gala Dinner, Tony White announcing the "Best of the Best" in World Label awards heldon the sidelines of Labelexpo Europe!

LMAI (India's label association) President Kuldip Goel and Vice President Rajesh Nema with Labelexpo Managing Director Lisa Milburn.

Professor Tan Junqiao receiving the receiving the Stanton Avery Lifetime achievement award from Georges Gravanis, President, Label and Graphic Materials, Avery Dennison and Mike Fairley


With Douglas Emslie, Tarsus Group Managing Director

With FINAT President Chris Ellison, FINAT events and communication manager Jakovina and LMAI Vice President Rajesh Nema

With Jules Lejuene, Managing Director FINAT

FINAT President in meeting with Mike Fairley at the "Label Academy" Stand

Networking at Dinner hosted by Lisa Milburn for Industry friends and colleagues around the world

Jakob Landsberg Sales Director of Nilpeter with Niklas Olsson Global Brand Manager of Flintgroup


With Lisa and Mike Fairley at the dinner

SMI Team at their Stand


Amit Ahuja Multitec

The Gallus Stand

With Lars and Peter Eriksen of Nilpeter

Kocher + Beck Stand

Karan Reddy of SticOn papers Hyderabad

Tapan Patel of BST Eltromat


John of Orthotec


Bobst Stand

Gavin Rittmeyer of Martin Automatic

MPS Stand

Kapil Anand of Cosmo Films

Marco Calcagni of OMET

Spilker Team

The Sahnis with Paolo Grasso, Omet

No Labelexpo at Brussels is complete without having spent a casual fun evening at the Grand Place!!!

Compiled By Harveer Sahni, Chairman, Weldon Celloplast Limited, New Delhi October 2017

Avery Dennison: 20 eventful years in India

Living in a rented chicken co-operative, a young American poverty stricken man in his early 20s worked as a night clerk to fund his education. He stopped school and went to live for a year in China, where he gained experience working with a printing press. He returned to USA after the year, graduated and desperately tried his hands at various business options, he even sold smoked bananas! He then took on a morning job at a flower shop and later in the day started to experiment on various small things in a 100 square foot place nearby. He came up with the idea of making self sticking labels. With the printing press experience behind him he saw the vision to start his new venture. With no money of his own, he borrowed 100$ from his fiancée, Dorothy Durfee, who later became his wife, to invest in his startup business. Using a washing machine motor, parts of a sewing machine and a saber saw, he developed the world’s first self adhesive label cutting machine. In 1935 he started his maiden venture Kum-Kleen Adhesive Products Co which would be the mother enterprise of the world’s largest labelstock company Avery Dennison Corporation and this poor man was"Ray Stanton Avery!"

In the first balance sheet of the company on 31st December 1935, the total assets stood at 958.82$ and Stan Avery’s capital at 488.77$.

The company was later renamed Avery Products Corp. based in Pasadena USA. In 1990 it was merged with Dennison Manufacturing of Framingham, Massachusetts, a firm that made and marketed adhesive label products as well as glue sticks, felt markers and other office supplies through such chains as Home Depot and Staples. It came to be known as Avery Dennison Corporation. The business so acquired from Dennison Manufacturing, became the Office and Consumer Products Division. This business along with their “Designed and Engineered Solutions” business was later sold to their largest customer CCL Industries Inc. for 500 Million USD.

R Stanton Avery

R Stanton Avery died in 1997 at the age of 90 years. At that time the company had 16,000 employees and annual sales of $3.2 billion. As of 2016, Avery Dennison’s sales were 6.09 Billion Dollars with manufacturing and distribution presence in over 50 countries, product sales in 90 countries and 25000 employees worldwide. They are ranked 427 in the list of Fortune 500 companies.

Raj Gopal Srinivasan

As western markets started showing signs of saturation and slowing growth rates, Avery Dennison took a strategic decision to invest in emerging markets.Chinaand India being home to over 37% of the world population became the obvious destinations to invest into. The China investment happened in 1994-95 and investments into India followed soon after. Indian pressure sensitive labels market was still in a nascent stage and the potential of this technology had neither been fully unraveled or exploited. Wet glue labels were largely prevalent. Manual labeling or wet glue applicators were in use with most brand owners. An Avery Dennison team, led by Ron, set up its base in India. Raj Gopal Srinivasan was appointed the first General Manager to build and to lead a motivated team. Under his dynamic leadership the first team of 25-30 employees gave shape to the project and in March 1997Avery Dennison India Private Limitedcommenced operations as a part of Asia Pacific Division of Avery Dennison Corporation.

The initial operations were started in a leased facility at Narsinghpur Industrial Area, Gurgaon with a single slitter to slit and distribute material imported from their units outside India. Given the size of the country and the label industry spread in small numbers across all regions, it was gigantic task with a limited team to achieve levels of business that would do justice to their stature as a multinational. Raj and his team did an excellent job by building personal rapport and relationship that extended bonding not only to the company managements but also to the families of owners. It was relationship selling at its best. A setup that was based entirely on imports was difficult to sustain as custom duties were high, foreign exchange fluctuated and rules were stringent. The input cost variations made stable selling prices a challenge.The management at Avery Dennison soon realized the imperative need to produce locally. A one meter wide hotmelt adhesive coater was installed in January 1998 to produce stocks with imported raw materials. The initial staff had a perfect team spirit instilled in them and motivated to achieve more with less resources.

Mahesh Pathak

A few of those initial team members of Raj Srinivasan are still working with Avery Dennison.Mahesh Pathak, joined in 1997 asone responsible for entire process and quality of plants. He was instrumental in setting up the entire department from scratch and commercialized all products locally with success. He was responsible for the organization to be the first certified Six-Sigma BB in whole of Asia-pacific region. He is also responsible for having lead the expansion and setting up of all plants. He has risen to be theSenior Operations Director – South Asia Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa (SAP and SSA).Umesh Agrawal, joined in 1997 as materials manager and over the years took up different responsibilities in the organization. Heading the operations from 2001-2003, Head of business and product development 2003-2006, Director-Supply Chain and Product Development 2006-2012, Director Supply Chain 2012-2014 South Asia and South Africa and now Director Supply Chain, Asia Pacific.Muralie KS, a Chartered accountant joined the team later in 2008, he is the Finance Director of the company.Sailesh Kapur joined Avery’s team in January 2008, he built up a strong connect with customers and also shaped up the present structure of their sales organization. Other members of Raj Srinivasan’s team who also contributed to making a strong foundation for the project but later left the organization includeDhiraj KapurandKapil Anand.

Once local production started, business did begin to settle down, however high duties and political uncertainty in country drove the company to start innovating and develop products based on local inputs manufactured to their stringent specifications and quality control systems. In 2001, Avery Dennison started to siliconize their own release liners and started to produce adhesive locally. This exercise of localizing and reducing dependence on imports along with lean manufacturing to economies of scale helped the company to offer products at affordable prices. Avery Dennison also took upon themselves to educate brand owners about the benefits of usingPressure Sensitive Adhesives(PSA) labels and about the consistency of the quality from Avery Dennison products. This not only brought additional business to them but helped to grow the market size in the country. Once the business situation settled down, by 2004 Avery Denison India was on a steady rate of double digit growth. It was time to make significant investments in technology and people as also to contribute to the expansion of PS market in India. It was also time to expand.

Avery Dennison Plant in Pune

In 2007 land admeasuring 22 acres was acquired at Ranjangaon near Pune for expansion. In 2008 the facility was ready to go into production with a one meter hotmelt coater, with capability to run at 500 meters per minute with inline silicon coating, this compared to the first one meter coater at Gurgaon that could run at 250 meters per minute. The facility was inaugurated by Dean Scarborough, the previous global CEO and President of Avery Dennison Corporation. An interesting story of his visit is that Dean flew into Mumbai on company’s private jet from where he came to Pune in a helicopter. The pilot of the helicopter lost way and landed in fields nearby and Dean had to be brought in by a private car. In 2010 having paved the path for stable growth and leaving behind a legacy of service to the customers as a primary focus, Raj Srinivasan left for USA. He had inculcated in a culture at Avery Dennison India of going to any extent to honour commitments and deliver top-notch service. It is his legacy that 95% of genuine requirements are serviced within 36 hours. The legacy has been carried on and improved upon by the teams that have succeeded him. Good planning, in-time supplies, exact sizes and good forecasting specially with imported materials, has become a way of life for the supply chain teams now. “97% of these targets are met and we are assessed and rated as per the 36 hour target” says Vivek Kumar, who is heading the Supply Chain at Avery Dennison. He further adds, “Stringent quality control and consistent quality makes us deliver to happy customers!” With the depart of Raj Srinivasan to the USA,Anil Sharmawas appointed to head the Indian operations.

Anil Sharma

Anil Sharma brought in a new wave of professionalism. Building the foundation and establishing the fundamentals from a startup, needs a lot of personal human intervention, which was well delivered by Raj and his team. The company under Anil Sharma gradually started to move from being men driven to systems driven and building up to the next level of expansion and growth. Implementing the systems for order registration, timely delivery, payments collection and addressing customer concerns. All these processes started to become systemized while still maintaining the personal connect. 2011 was an eventful year for Avery Dennison in India. Another 1.5 meter hotmelt adhesive coater was installed at the Pune facility to enhance production capacity. Since they already had a production facility in North in Gurgaon and also in the West at Pune, a need was felt for having a stock point South India to make just-in-time supplies to customers in the south, adhering to the legacy of excellent customer service delivery. A slitting facility was also commissioned in Bangalore in 2011.

Inauguration of Innovation and Knowledge center PUNE

In the same yearAvery Dennison Knowledge centerwas set up in Bangalore. It was largely felt by Anil Sharma and his team that there was a dire need of training in the Indian label industry. There is also an acute shortage of trained manpower in the industry that was steadily growing with increasing population. High numbers of educated young people are coming out of universities getting employment and in turn creating a huge market for retail and eventually labels. According toJitesh MehtaDirector Product development, “This knowledge centre was created to be a brand neutral platform, purely to impart knowledge to converters and to their employees”. In recent times Avery Dennison has helped trained many young boys in collaboration with the Indian label association,LMAIhas also helped some of them with placement in label manufacturing companies. This centre aims to impart skills and not to do any brand promotion.The knowledge center has recently been shifted to Pune because they already had their Research and Development center there. It was synergy to have the Research and Development center and knowledge center at the same place.

With substantial investment made in 2010-11 they had surplus capacity and capabilities in their hands. Avery started to invest in the South Africa and other African markets to expand the sale of their products in these countries. Marketing team was hired locally in these countries while finance and back-end support is handled in India. It is interesting to note that they were the first among the organized global labelstock manufacturing companies who invested in these markets. Avery Dennison has in recent times also endeavored successfully to expand their reach to countries around India selling their products to Srilanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal as well.

In 2014 to expand further and augment its range of products offered, Avery Dennison India installed another coater at Pune. This time, it was an emulsion adhesive coater of 1.50 meter width. With increased manufacturing capacity and capabilities a bigger range of products is now being offered to their customer base. According to Vivek, who heads the supply chain management in South Asia, Avery Dennison’s bulk of the production i.e., about 350-400 SKUs comes out of the Pune facility. Gurgaon plant now complements the total production most of which is rolled out from the Pune plant. Solvent based adhesive products are still imported and sold wherever required. 95% of all products sold by Avery Dennison in India are made in India complying with the Prime Minister’s call to “Make in India”. 20 years ago they were largely reliant on imports and now only 8-10% material is imported, rest is all manufactured in India.

Pankaj Bhardwaj

In 2015 Anil Sharma was elevated to take up larger responsibilities as Vice President and General Manager, South Asia Pacific and Sub Saharan Africa. His team-matePankaj Bhardwaj, became his successor as Commercial Director-South Asia, Labels and Packaging Materials. Later this year in 2017 Pankaj was entrusted with a larger role as Senior Director & General Manager-South Asia at Avery Dennison India Pvt Ltd. Pankaj became a perfect combination of Raj’s legacy of relationship building and Anil’s professionalism. While maintaining close co-operation with converters, most of whom are running family owned businesses, he leads his team to interact with brand owners advising them on decoration, value addition on labels to keeping them updated on the latest trends. Avery Dennison continues to invest in technologies and new business areas likeRFID, specialty tapes, reflective products and sustainable manufacturing. They are also investing time and money in advising printers on new decoration and converting techniques as also helping expansion of the PSA label markets to smaller towns of India.

Pankaj feels that it is good that more labelstock manufacturers are coming into the market. It maybe challenging in view of depleting margins but if that makes the market size to grow, it is welcome. Avery Dennsion looks at India as one of the fastest growing markets and they are willing to continuously invest here. Proof of their commitment is evident from setting up of R&D center, Knowledge Centre, support to LMAI, support to technical workshops and label awards, etc. Adjacent technologies do present a challenge; Shrink sleeves growing at the same rate as PSA labels, IML is a niche not very wide spread and Digital is to be watched. Indulgence in digitally printed label segment is fast becoming an imperative. Despite the market dynamics Avery Dennison India in the last 5-7 years is achieving a CAGR (Compound aggregate growth rate) of double digits.

Recyclability and waste management are industry challenges. As an environmentally consciouslyCorporation, Avery Dennison has published its global sustainability goals. Avery Dennison India is making steady progress to support these goals by having all Indian sites FSC certified and more than 50% paper sourced from FSC certified sources. Also, all Indian sites are more than 99% landfill free.

Company is continually redesigning its products to reduce carbon footprint and promoting 25 mic PET liners given thatpaper liners are largely 60-62 gsm substance and are extremely difficult to recycle. PET is recyclable thereby reducing the impact on environment.

Corporate social responsibility is getting increasing focus for Avery DennisonIndia. Company has multiple programs in the areas of women empowerment, children health and education. Among other programs, Avery Dennison Foundation runs a program by the name of 'Avery Dennison Spirit Of Inventions' in collaboration with six universities by recognizing and rewarding innovative ideas from students in the field of science, engineering and technology.