The organized food and beverage industry in India, valued at INR 400,000 crore (2019 figures), is expected to grow to INR 10,00,000 crore by 2025 fueled by growing population, increased urbanization and higher standard of living. The pandemic, on top of that has proved to be a blessing in disguise as the emphasis has shifted more towards ordering through eCommerce portals and home delivery. There is a growing demand for hygienic and tamper-proof packaging with higher shelf life.

Lifestyle change is impacting the type of food we consume – people are shifting more toward packaged foods that can be easily consumed on the go. Because of this, brands are required to respond effectively by providing options that can stand in for breakfast, lunch, and dinner including for those smaller in-between meals. Snack-size bags of chips and variety packs with different flavored snacks are more prominent at events and occasions, allowing flavor and proper portion to match the taste of everyone in the guest list. Packaging is driving the change.

As per Mckinsey’s report (9 May 2019), the top five trends that are reshaping the packaging industry are – eCommerce, changing consumer preferences, FMCG and retail-margin compression, sustainability, and digitalization and Internet of Things (IoT). Preparing for these changes requires new ways of thinking – ‘intuition resets’ – about a packaging company’s focus and market approach.

This rising concern of the environmentalist and the drive towards circular economy principles has made the packaging industry focus on plastic waste that has come under particular scrutiny because of its non-biodegradability. Appropriate steps need to be taken to make the packaging industry more sustainable. As sustainability has become a key motivator for consumers, brands are increasingly keen on packaging materials and designs that demonstrably show their commitment to the environment.

As a preferred substrate, paper and board will continue to benefit from eCommerce growth and are ideal for integrating digital and IoT solutions (using quick-response codes, radio-frequency-ID tags, near-field-communication protocols and so on). Today, paper- and board-based packaging – be it pizza boxes, milk/juice cartons or delivery boxes – are printed on sheetfed offset presses. With the increased volume, printers face a dilemma on whether to invest in more lines, newer plants or to let go of high volume orders.

Some of the difficulties faced by the printers using sheetfed technology are:

1. Speed restriction up to 18,000 sheets per hour.

2. Less flexibility in size due to fixed cut-off of cylinder.

3. Multiple lines lead to the need for more manpower.

4. Huge warehousing space required to store pallets of card/paper.

How does web offset deal with these drawbacks?

Web offset as a technology has always been a high-speed one compared to sheet offset printing. Press speeds up to 400 m/minute result in a direct advantage of 180 to 200% higher productivity. Web offset reels have quite a few inherent advantages compared to sheets. For example:

• They can be stored vertically, one on top of the other and do not require pallets.

• The price is less compared to sheets as the reels can be transported directly without any need to cut them further into sheets.
• Paper savings during production due to no gripper margins (leading to a savings of 0.8-1.8 % depending on repeat length).
• Reel printing can have an output either in the form of a rewound reel or sheet, hence giving rise to more flexibility especially in post-printing operations like blanking, punching, die-cutting etc.

Low presence of web offset in package printing – why?

Well, the answer lies somewhere between the lack of interest amongst major OEMs of web offset (due to erstwhile ever-growing newspaper/commercial print sector) to adaptation of the technology to suit the needs of printing on heavier substrates.

What are the options available today?

The Varioman c:line by manroland Goss web systems is one such option available today. Launched in 2018, it has already established a foothold in two leading printers in Europe and is sure to go a long way in changing the dynamics in the packaging printing world.

Automation

Automation is an important consideration today as IoT and conformity to Industry 4.0 has become imperative. Varioman has a unique feature PECOM -X, an automation system that structures the entire networking and automation offer into clearly organized product groups for the five core competence workflow sections – from evaluation via networking and operation up to the production process and its control.

The road ahead

Even when the pandemic is over, we are bound to face what some would like to call “the new normal”. The world would change and so would the industry as a whole, and the F&B sector in particular. The packaging industry must also change to keep pace with it. So it would become imperative for the players to look for a solution that brings about cost efficiencies, economies of scale and newer product innovations while maintaining the highest standards of health safety protocols.

Author: Sudeep Bhattacharjee, managing director, manroland Goss web systems (India)