Vadodara-based Concord Printing has installed a Bobst Expertfold 110 A2 folder-gluer with corrugation unit at its newly set up plant in the city’s Halol industrial area. One of India’s largest manufacturers of packaging, promotional and print design material, Concord Printing serves domestic and international clients across FMCG, real estate, pharmaceutical and other sectors. About 85% of the business is packaging, of which 50% is monocartons and 35% is corrugated packaging.
Situated some 20 km away from the company’s city unit, the new 125,000 sqft plant is still in its first phase of construction. Once fully operational, it will increase Concord’s monthly capacity by more than 50% to over 300 tonnes of paper and paperboard with the Bobst Expertfold playing a key role. Established in 1968, Concord Printing is a second-generation family company previously known as Pravin Printing Press and Concord Enterprise.
“Right now, we are operating the Halol plant in parts, where we have the infrastructure for lamination and converting,” said director Arshad Memon, who is the younger of the two Memon brothers running the company together – Kayyum being the elder brother.
The new Bobst Expertfold 110 A2 was installed in July 2021. According to Bobst, it is a versatile folder-gluer that enables highly flexible production of a wide variety of box styles, combining consistency with quality to increase productivity. At Concord, the new A2 model joins investments made at the start of 2020, which include a slew of corrugation machines for die-cutting, hot foil stamping and window patching.
The company was already running a Bobst Visionfold 110 folder-gluer installed in 2015, and a Bobst Novacut 106 die-cutter from in 2017, at the city plant. According to Arshad Memon, the Visionfold enabled Concord to fulfill the increased demand for packaging, particularly in the food and pharma sectors, which began soon after the Covid-19 pandemic struck. “Our packaging production grew massively during this time, which meant we were doing around 40% more work than we normally did,” he said.
“Our existing Bobst Visionfold 110 folder-gluer configured with 4- and 6-corner device has served us well. It gave us the ability to process quickly and easily all the new demands that we were receiving,” Memon added before giving the key reasons for investing in the new Bobst Expertfold machine: “Whenever we find a bottleneck in our process, we think that’s the right time to add a new machine. That being said, we do increase the hours on the machine first, but if the bottleneck persists and is around 35% to 40%, opting for an additional machine is the best decision. So that’s what we did.”
The second reason for choosing the new Expertfold was the confidence in the Bobst brand. “We are not very comfortable with other brands, particularly when buying critical equipment like folder-gluers, we prefer Bobst,” he said.
The third reason was timing. “Believe it or not, the hardest times are actually the best times to invest. There’s a fear of the future, and hence the fear of spending money. This low demand means machines are often available for quick delivery. We also believe that when the worst is over, the demand for products will double, so we wanted to be ready for the surge,” he concluded.
Besides the converting machines, the company is equipped with three offset presses – an RMGT 6-color plus UV coater, a Heidelberg SM 74 4-color, and a Roland 200 single-color.