Yansefu is a leading manufacturer of high-performance printing inks, coatings, polyurethanes and adhesives for gravure and flexo applications. The company is based in Haryana, India, and exports its printing inks and adhesives to customers across the globe, including Nepal, Nigeria, Bangladesh and UAE. In an interaction with The Packman, JK Sharma – CEO, Yansefu, India, talks about the impact of the pandemic on India’s packaging and printing ink industry and the latest product developments and alternative technologies at Yansefu. Here is an excerpt from the interview.
Mahan Hazarika: What is the impact of the pandemic on the ink industry? How have you coped with it?
JK Sharma: Interestingly, the overall growth of flexible packaging has seen a positive trend during the pandemic so far – particularly in the rural areas of India, as people there started realizing the importance of packaged foods in terms of safety and hygiene requirements. In addition, in the urban areas, due to increased demand for the door-to-door delivery and online marketing of grocery products, the packaging sector witnessed a significant rise in demand for packaging materials. In addition, the pharma packaging sector so far observed a substantial upsurge in packaging volume due to Covid-19.
However, it has been a big challenge for the printing ink industry to cope with this growth and sustain the supply chain so that the converters should not suffer. This was due to lockdowns, unavailability of an adequate workforce at manufacturing plant and raw material crisis, and sudden rise of raw material prices. We at Yansefu focused more on indigenous in-house technology to produce the ink binders and additives. Since our resin and adhesive manufacturing plant is fully automatic, this helped us somehow to run the show. But the increased price of solvents, pigments and monomers is still a bottleneck. But when you have a dedicated R&D and production team to provide their wholehearted support to develop innovative technologies and processes, life is always less miserable. I am entirely optimistic that this team will bring us alternative technologies soon to tackle this challenge.
Mahan Hazarika: What does the next year look like?
JK Sharma: We are optimistic. Based on our experience of the last two years, I can say the overall packaging industry will grow significantly in the upcoming years. But the raw material prices will remain a considerable challenge for the financial stability of the ink industry even in the next year. Further, the workforce-related challenges can only be eliminated once the vaccination drive is implemented across the supply chain.
Mahan Hazarika: What are your future plans in India?
JK Sharma: We have a very robust plan to further enhance our in-house production of critical raw materials with the support of our R&D team. This will enrich our self-dependency on raw material sourcing. In addition, our purchase and sourcing team is continuously engaged in finding out and collaborating with local Indian manufacturers for the development of alternatives. This will help us in improving the sustainability drive and being ‘Atmanirvar.’
Mahan Hazarika: What is unique about Yansefu? Which products are your best-selling products?
JK Sharma: In line with our company philosophy, we do not just sell products but rather sell solutions. Due to its wide range of product portfolio and applications, Yansefu is a one-point solution providing organization in the true sense. Our product range includes raw materials for printing inks and coatings such as ink binders, color concentrates and innovative coating additives, which we produce in our reactors. We really feel privileged to have other ink manufacturers as our clients opting for these products. In addition, we manufacture and sell polyester polyols used in adhesive and PU applications. We have solvent-based, water-based inks, lamination adhesives, various gloss and heat-seal lacquers, coatings and primers such as 2K coatings, effect coatings, extrusion primers for converting uses. We also offer a few products for other specialized applications such as textile, offset, etc. Additionally, we also support our customers in providing ink management options such as ink-kitchen, printing-ink plant set-up, conversion from one technology to another at customer place, and providing guidance and support towards the latest development on product safety and regulations. Our primary focus is to provide compliance products as per local regulations such as IS15495:2020 as well as global regulations such as Swiss Ordinance etc.
Mahan Hazarika: What are the latest product developments at Yansefu?
JK Sharma: Most of the local and global brand owners are working with sustainable packaging. Also, the Indian government is emphasizing environmentally friendly activities. There are so many concepts associated with it. Recyclability, biodegradability, compostable, monolayer packaging, same family polymer packaging are few phenomena associated with them. The printing inks and coatings should be compatible with such packaging. We are actively working in such areas.
Although solvent-based inks are easier to print on the gravure machine, a few hazards are associated with it, such as fire, primarily due to static charges. In addition, if you look into the current scenario, RM prices, in particular the solvent prices, have gone up. Also, in the absence of solvent recovery systems, VOC emissions of solvent-based inks are much higher. Water-based inks are generally considered to be safe and ink reducer price is much lower. The challenge lies with the drying and printability, and the choice of resin system is the critical innovation area in this regard. Our water-based products have already started addressing such challenges.
Further, nitrosamine-free inks are now becoming a necessity, particularly for pharma packaging; this is due to USFDA restriction and its carcinogenic effect. In ink, it is formed when the nitro group of the nitrocellulose moiety reacts with the amines present in the ink matrix. So if the ink will be free from nitrocellulose, then there will be limited chances of nitrosamine generation. We have filed one patent on the same concept, and our product has already been validated at the customers’ place.
An important area of sustainable activity is energy consumption. That is why LED curing, which consumes energy much lower than that of UV curing technology, is gaining lots of importance. In addition to low energy consumption, other advantages are higher lamp lifetime, no ozone production, etc. Our LED coatings have set a benchmark in the flexible packaging market, and we are continuously investing our effort to develop such products.
In addition, our cutting-edge lamination adhesive and various specialty products such as release primers and heat-seal-lacquers are gaining market focus.
Mahan Hazarika: How has the printing/packaging ink market developed in the last five years?
JK Sharma: As mentioned above, brand owners are continuously demanding regulatory compliance products in the flexible packaging domain due to various product safety-related concerns in the last years. The government is focusing hard on resolving plastic pollution challenges as well as tackling sustainability issues. Increasing solvent prices, VOC, and fire hazards are constantly promoting the development of contemporary water-based and radiation-curing products over conventional solvent-based technologies. Another aspect that has been impacting the market growth in the last few years is the press speed. Accordingly, ink technologies and the market has been going through a dynamic change.