Round Table of Printers at Ludhiana

Ludhiana, April 18, 2014: Offset Printers’ Association organised ‘Round Table’ on Friday to discuss the problems of Printing and Packaging Industry, Rahul Kumar, Associated Editor, PrintWeek was in the chair.

After through discussion the house came to the conclusion that since Printing & Packaging is one of the fast growing industry of India, it is necessary that the Government may take care some of the problems. Since it is the capital intensive industry, the government must consider interest free loans especially for this industry. The house felt that a scheme similar to TUFF scheme for the textile industry may be introduced for this industry. It was also observed that since none of the quality printing machine is manufactured in India it is high time that Government may abolish the custom duty on the printing machine not manufactured in India.

Due to high dependence on migrated labour now a days’ work force for the industry is not available, on the other hand there is not a single printing institute in the state, and the house was unanimous to request the government for opening some technical training institute for printing in Punjab. 

Some of the members felt that due to unhealthy competition, it is very difficult these days to survive, some time we have to sell less than the cost price just to be in the market. Kamal Chopra pointed out that we must try to produce at the minimum cost. This is possible with avoiding wastage and adopting the lean manufacturing systems.

Printing & Packaging industry is suffering with the sudden increase of prices of paper, ink and chemical etc. by the mills without prior notice, with the result we have to supply the material at the previously committed prices. The house observed that there should be any regularity authority on these raw materials so that the dealers/mill owners may not increase the prices unnecessarily or without any prior notice.

Chopra added that bulk purchase can be the answer by forming a group of 5 or 10 people you can purchase the raw material directly from the mills or from Delhi at cheaper rates.

Discussing the cluster programme of the government of India, Mr. Kamal Chopra informed that by way of forming a group of 20 persons you can buy height end machinery where GoI will support up to 90% of the cost of project. Working jointly in a cluster is the only answer to the major problems being faced by the industry today.  With this not only that you can solve your major problems, but you can also fetch the global outsourced printing and packaging work.

The major problem of the industry is disproportionate excise structure, the input duty is 6% where as we have to charge 12% on the output resulting extra burden on the entrepreneur. There must be same duty on input as well as on output, as in the case of corrugated cartons. It is strange that the structure of corrugated carton and card board boxes is the same but there is different duty on both these items. The duty on corrugated carton is 6% whereas it is 12% on the cardboard boxes. There is need for the rectification of this anomaly.

Rahul said that most of the major problems being faced by the printing and packaging industry here can be solved by way of running your units in professional way. Instead of indulging the competition within yourself it is always better to work as a joint force to avoid unnecessary competition. Not only this while working together it will be possible to fetch the bigger orders and make Ludhiana as the hub of packaging in India.  It is very nice to see the working of Offset Printers Association (OPA) here, I have not seen such devoted members and such a lively association anywhere in India. Ludhiana is the packaging centre and can become the hub for the global outsourced packaging work with little efforts and support of the Government, he said.

Sanjay Gandhi, Hans Raj Chopra, Gagandeep Singh, Amarjot Singh Mancoo, Sri Ram Nanda, Anup Jain, Parvesh Jagga, Saurabh Jain, Amarjot Arora, Ashwani Gupta, Sanjay Kumar, J B Goel, Neeraj Pandit, Arjun Pandit, Inder Tuli, Chaman Lal, Sandeep Thapar, Sanjay Bector, Varun Jain and Ashok Kumar  were among those present.