Any Graphics is looking to rapidly ramp up its capacity by investing more in the coming days. As a part of its capacity-building measure, it only recently purchased a 4-acre land close to its existing plant to build a new state-of-the-art plant. The new plant is expected to be up and running in about a year and a half. The high-tech comprehensive plant will follow the concept of ‘total quality’ throughout the manufacturing process, and not just the final product, according to Kuldip Goel, managing director of Any Graphics. In line with the total quality concept, the entire factory will run on a single floor with prepress, press, and postpress connected in a serial mode.
“The purpose of a single-floor plant is to maintain a lean system, ensure fewer defects in productivity, and save time and manpower. We will employ teams of multi-skilled workers and use highly flexible, increasingly automated machines to produce volumes of high-quality products,” said Goel. He informed that the new plant will make optimum use of solar energy to light the plant. “We are concerned about the environment and sustainability, and even looking at acquiring the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for this plant,” he added. LEED is a popular green building certification program used worldwide.
Innovation and R&D
Innovation is a recurring theme at Any Graphics. In its latest stint with innovation, the company has developed a solution that can enhance the gloss of UV varnish multi-fold. “The process may replace lamination if the customer needs it solely for attaining high gloss,” said Goel. “A few projects have already been delivered using the solution.” Innovation at Any Graphics is spearheaded by Kuldip Goel and his son Naveen Goel, who head the R&D team.
Another notable mention from the company’s stable of innovations is a solution that allows online removal or stripping of non-continuous waste matrix in the production of self-adhesive labels for products like CD, which has a hole. “Normally in label printing, the waste that you want to remove online must be continuous, which looks like a ladder. If the waste is not intact, you cannot remove it online. Converters may have to resort to removing the waste manually offline, for example, in the case of CD sticker, where you need to fully cut or remove it, rendering the process unproductive and costly. But our in-house process can remove non-continuous wastage online without deep or full cut,” Goel said. He said that although the process of waste matrix stripping in self-adhesive labels sounds simple, it is in fact one of the most complex and painful areas that every label converter has to face in his daily life.
Customer delight takes center stage
“We don’t just manufacture labels, we beautify them,” said Goel. “We treat all products as our own baby. Price is not the criterion where we compete. We strive to delight our customers with our best services and imaginative beautification of labels. As far as quality is concerned, once we accept an order, we don’t discriminate between a small and a big order.”
The new boss of LMAI
After taking over the reins as president of Label Manufacturers’ Association of India (LMAI), Goel appears to be a man on a mission. He recently launched a new web portal for LMAI members. “The portal will allow LMAI members to list their unused raw material for fellow members to buy at an economical rate. Many label printers generate left-out/unused material, which eventually becomes obsolete over time. As per our research, material worth more than 10 crore expires unused every month at label converters’ end in India. So the portal will be useful for the whole label industry.” Label converters can also sell their unused machinery through this portal. As the new LMAI president, Goel also played his part in ensuring LMAI Label Awards ceremony this year for the first time, is being organized by LMAI independently. Earlier, it was organized by Tarsus.
