The India Package Meet Reaches Out To Packaging Users In ‘The Grassroots Tour’
Three Uttarakhand towns traversed in three days.

India Package Meet- the roving show of Print-Packaging.com that is a distinctive B2B event as well as a promotional medium for the packaging related events of the company crisscrossed the 'Deva Bhumi' of Uttarakhand with three shows in three towns in the space of three days creating a stir among the industry. The meet that has been to over twenty towns and cities across the country and also to Colombo and Dhaka was on what was dubbed as the 'Grassroots Tour' with the objective of taking the event to where the packaging is actually used and was in fact reaching out to the new industry clusters that are coming up in Uttarakhand to take advantage of the fiscal benefits offered by the Government. Roorkee, Dehradun and Haridwar were the chosen venues to receive the daylong meets. Over 500 business professionals benefited from visiting the traveling show in the three days.

The coming together of the four-niche events- India Packaging Show, India Converting Show, India Corrugated Show and India Flexo Show from 21- 24 August 2007 at Pragati Maidan has aroused a great interest in the industry and provided the perfect background to take such a tour. While five top speakers had lined up presentations on subjects of contemporary interest, over twenty-seven leading companies had joined the tabletop show to make for an interesting days event at each town.

The grassroots tour was supported by the regional associations and included The Indian Industries Association, Uttrakhand Industrial Welfare Association, Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association - Uttaranchal, Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Haridwar, Bhagwanpur Industries Association, Sidcul Industrial Association, Roorkee Small Scale Industries Association and Haridwar Industrial Development Association.

NL Reddy, President, Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, Uttaranchal that has members mainly in the Bhagwanpur Industrial Area, Shiv Chadha, Vice President, Roorkee Small Scale Industrial Association and RP Sharma, V. President, Bhagwanpur Industries Association were the special guests at the Roorkee event. `We are gratified to see that professional organisers have taken the trouble to bring such an event to our doorsteps,` said Sharma while wishing the upcoming event in Delhi a grand success.

`The growing importance of packaging in every sphere is underlined by this meet,` said Harish Gurbux, Executive Director, SIDBI, and the Chief Guest for the Dehradun event. He exhorted entrepreneurs to explore emerging opportunities in the field of packaging and promised SIDBI's help for any such ventures. Earlier, he lit the traditional lamp to formally open the Dehradun event.

Kaushalya Bandhu, General Manager, District Industries Centre, Dehradun, Md. Latif Chaudhary, President, Uttaranchal Industries Welfare Association, Selaqui Chapter and Sominder Gupta, Chairman, Indian Industries Association, Dehradun Chapter were the other special guests in the second days event.

Harinder Garg, General Secretary, Sidcul Industrial Association, Haridwar, Sandeep Jain, President, Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, Haridwar, Ashok Sharma, President, Uttaranchal Industries Welfare Association, Haridwar Chapter, Rajan Mishra, President, Haridwar Industrial Development Association were the special guests at the Haridwar event.

The half-day conference was a “sampler” of what would be presented at PackAge 2007- the international conference that will be held concurrently with the August exhibition. The theme was “Packaging & Converting: Gearing Up For The Retail Revolution”. In the identical conference in the three venues the first paper was entitled “Closures & Caps: New Developments” and it was presented by Prabal Chakraborti Sales Manager of Bericap India, the country's leading manufacturer of caps and closures. He explained the basic concepts in development of closures and elaborated on Bericap's recent product introductions in tamper-evident, user-friendly and child-resistant closures.

Harish Madan, Managing Director of SnS Containers, then talked about “Corrugated Packaging: Overview & Trends”. He traced the history of corrugated packaging in India, its present status and the way it was headed. He also drew a comparison with the rapid progress made by China in recent years.

Harveer Sahni, Managing Director of Weldon Celloplast, India's leading labelstock manufacturer presented a paper on “Practical Solutions for Brand Security” where he highlighted the need to protect brands against the global menace of counterfeiting. He laid out the various techniques and devices available like substrate solutions, holograms, taggants, ink-based solutions, RFID etc. and mentioned that the best approach was to use a combination of several overt and covert devices and to keep changing them to stay ahead of counterfeiters.
Avinash Bangale, Mico Bosch, talked about “Continuous Motion Vertical Form, Fill & Seal Machines” and its advantages over intermittent machines. He spoke about the significant price/space saving for total production line including up- and downstream equipment besides the savings in operator costs.

S. Chidambar, an industry consultant, then presented the concluding paper on behalf of Uflex (formerly Flex Industries) on “The Indian Flexible Packaging Market” with particular emphasis on recent developments in metallised films (like plasma-enhanced metallising) which have emerged as the best high-barrier options in flexible packaging.

The tabletop exhibition at the three centers was made up with twenty seven leading Indian companies and included Ajanta Packaging, Baumer India Pvt. Ltd., Bericap India, Borkar Packaging Pvt. Ltd., Creed Engineerings Pvt Ltd., ELGI Equipments Limited, Flexo (Image) Graphics Pvt Ltd., Great Eastern Impex Pvt Ltd., Hindustan Adhesive Ltd., Hi-Glo Holo Images Pvt Ltd., IPP Group, Label Planet., Millenium Packaging Solutions, MICO (Bosch), Natraj Corrugation Co., P G Foils Ltd., Packolabel Systems Pvt Ltd, Pidilite Industries, Shrink Packaging Systems, SnS Containers, Strapware, Vishal Holo Solutions (P) Limited, Weldon Celloplast Ltd., Wimco Ltd., Uflex Pvt. Ltd., JRM Sales and Micro Inks etc.

“This has been a unique experience for us. This is the first time that we have participated in the India Package Meet and have gathered several serious enquiries over the last three days. We shall look forward to the next round of such meets,” said Prabal Chakraborti of Bericap India echoing the sentiments of the twenty seven satisfied exhibitors.

Date: 20-Jun-2007