India Expo Centre, Greater Noida, is slated to play host to the who's who of the packaging industry at two co-located events – India Packaging Show 2012 and PackPlus 2012 – from December 7-10, 2012. Print-Packaging.com is the organiser of the shows.
Also Food Technology Show 2012 will take place in the Processing Zone, which is co-located with PackPlus 2012.
PackPlus 2012
The objective of PackPlus 2012 is to bring manufacturers and providers of machinery, material and services for the food, pharmaceutical and packaging industry from India and overseas under one roof.
According to the organisers, the event will have four zones (the Packaging Zone, the Converting Zone, the Processing Zone and the Supply Chain Zone), “Growth in the Indian packaging industry has moved into the 20 per cent band.”
Packaging Zone
Companies representing three segments – packaging machines and equipment, packaging materials and services – will showcase their latest products in this zone.
Packaging machines and equipment include counting, weighing, forming, filling, closing, bottling and sealing machines; wrapping, skin and blister packaging machines; reading, checking and inspection, coding and/or online printing machines; foiling, capsuling, feeding and labelling machines.
Packaging materials include plastic films and foils, paper, carton, cardboard, textiles and woven, composite and fleece materials. Packaging materials include flexible, semi-rigid and rigid bottles, boxes, cans, capsules, cases, ampoules, bags, sacks, jackets, jugs, cups, drums, containers, baskets, tubes, crates, hobbocks, sleeves, nets, inserts, etc. made of paper, board, film, foil, composites, skins, glass, metal and foam. Closing and sealing material include straps, wires, cords, clamps, tapes and adhesives; closures, caps, lips, catches, locks, clips, seals and stoppers; padding, protection and lining material; handling material; pallets, labels and decoration material.
Services include designers, consultants, institutes, testing laboratories, software, books and magazines and contract packaging.
The India Packaging Show 2012 will take place in this zone.
Converting Zone
Indian converters have set up world-class facilities and the corrugated box industry is set for a makeover.
The show will have three co-located shows – the India Converting Show, the India Flexo Show and the India Corrugated Show. Each of these has its own exhibiting segments, which are listed as follows.
India Converting Show
The segments showcasing their services at the India Converting Show include package designers and converters, providers of pre-press, printing and converting equipment, coating, laminating, finishing, label printing and labelling equipment, accessories, paper, film and foil, inks and varnishes, cylinders, dies and rollers, material and supplies.
India Flexo Show
Those showcasing at the India Flexo Show include providers of inks, Anilox rollers, Flexo presses and pressroom equipment, plates and plate-making equipment, die cutting tools, software, substrates and services.
India Corrugated Show
At the India Corrugated Show, visitors can meet designers and manufacturers of corrugated boxes, manufacturers of machinery, heating systems, boilers, adhesives, stitching wires, inks, Anilox rollers, Flexo plates, etc., manufacturers and suppliers of testing equipment for paper and packages, computer software developers for box design, machine operations and administration, paper mills, paper dealers and printers.
Processing Zone
According to the organisers, the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry have both embraced automation, which has helped them grow in the competitive market.
The list of exhibitors is reflective of this:
As far as the food industry is concerned, the segments include process automation, instrumentation and controls, robotics, motion drive automation, bus and wireless technology, building automation, pumps and valves, hydraulics and pneumatics, facility management, service and maintenance automation in machine tools, software and enterprise solutions.
Other exhibiting segments including technologies, equipment, material and services for food production and processing, brewing and distilling, baking, freezing, refrigeration and climate engineering, garbage disposal and sanitation, testing and measuring, restaurant and catering, vending, packaging and storage and conveyance and distribution.
The pharmaceutical exhibitors including pharmaceutical and parapharmaceutical product process and packaging machinery, raw material, services, quality control, environmental control and handling and storage systems.
Pharma Technology 2012 and India Automation Show 2012 are the other co-located shows comprising the Processing Zone.
Supply Chain Zone
According to Print-Packaging.com, “Improving supply chain efficiencies is the order of the day.”
The following are the exhibiting segments in the Supply Chain Zone:
Rigid packaging, rigid intermediate bulk containers, flexible intermediate containers, woven sacks, FlexiTanks, material, bulk filling machines, circular looms, filling, dosing, weighing, end-of-line packaging solutions, industrial sewing machines, extrusion/coating machines, accessories and finished packaging, barcodes, RFID, card technologies. Biometrics, security solutions and real-time location systems (RLTS), supply chain system designers and integrators, cold chain, sorting, grading, cleaning, warehousing systems, material handling, weighing, testing equipment, software, etc.
It will comprise three shows – Bulk Pack 2012, India AIDC Show 2012 and India Logistics Show 2012.
Packaging facts
One of the organisers stated, “The packaging industry is highly fragmented and estimated to be about Rs 8,000 crore. It is believed to be growing at 22-25 per cent per annum, and in the next five years, the sector is expected to triple to approximately $60 billion.”
“The net profit of the packaging industry witnessed a spurt of about 104.5 per cent in the third quarter of the fiscal year 2008, against a growth of about 29.5 per cent at the end of the fourth quarter of 2006,” Print-Packaging.com said.
Attributing the growth of packaging to a large growing middle-class, liberalisation and the fact that India's retail sector is more organised now, the organisers said while rigid packaging accounts for over 80 per cent of total packaging in India, flexible packaging constitutes the remainder.
Print-Packaging.com said, “There are about 600-700 packaging machinery manufacturers in India. About 95 per cent of them are in the small and medium sector. The country's packaging machinery imports are estimated to be about $125 million.”
In 2007-2008, the import (customs) duty levied on packaging machinery was about 25.58 per cent. Till recently, Germany and Italy were major suppliers of packaging machinery to India, but the focus is gradually shifting to Asian countries like China, Korea and Taiwan.
“Even the exports of Indian packaging machinery are rapidly growing. India's per capita packaging consumption is less than $15 against the global average, which is nearly $100,” the organisers said.
They said, “The total demand for paper is estimated to be around 6 million tonnes, of which about 40 per cent is consumed by the packaging industry. Laminated products, including form-fill-seal (FFS) pouches, laminated tubes and Tetra-Paks, are growing at about 30 per cent per annum.”
Opportunities for F&B
The Indian food and beverage industry is a thriving industry with large untapped potential. In fact, the country is second only to China as far as food production is concerned. It is the world's second-largest producer of vegetables and third-largest producer of fruit.
India is the world's second largest inland sector producer of fish. It produces about 6.57 million metric tonnes of fish ever year. Only Japan produces more. The global spice trade is 850,000 tonnes annually. India accounts for 44 per cent in quantity and 36 per cent in value.
Print-Packaging.com also provided statistics for the Indian beer (12 million hectolitre) and functional food market. The latter earned revenues of about $185 million five years ago, and is expected to reach the $1,161 million mark this year.
The factors instrumental in driving growth and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Indian food industry are effective distribution network and supply chain; a product range customised to suit local market requirements; superior processing technology, and brand building and marketing.
Automation
Automation refers to various kinds of technologies that improve the efficiencies and competitiveness of a business and trigger growth. As India's economy became globalised, the domestic companies were found wanting as far as free market dynamics were concerned.
Indian companies enjoy practically no protection from the state, but despite these limitations, Print-Packaging.com credited them with taking the initiative to become more efficient and learning to re-engineer the business processes, so that they can compete with their global counterparts.
“Among other things, the deployment of information technology has been extensive in companies that are better managed than others. And the one field where it has been deployed with a degree of success is supply chain management,” the organisers stated.
They added, “This has brought the focus on Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) technologies, which several companies have integrated with their (enterprise resource planning/electronic data interchange) ERP/EDI applications.”
Print-Packaging.com also said, “The entry of multinational corporations (MNCs) and retailing shifts have also significantly contributed to a higher use of barcoding and automatic identification technologies.”
“These technologies would be used in the field of e-governance. Not only have the central and state governments adopted the technologies in ID projects, etc., but municipal corporations, village panchayats, etc. are also expected to use them to streamline administration,” they said.
The AIDC industry – which includes barcodes, smart cards, radio-frequency identification (RFID), biometrics and electronic article surveillance (EAS) – is perhaps one of the fastest-growing segments of the economy of many a country in the world.
“The base is still small in India, but the year-on-year growth rate is over 40 per cent, which is becoming increasingly significant. The incremental growth is large enough to grab the attention of the major global players,” the owners stated.
Print-Packaging.com also stated, “Each of the factors that drives the requirements of the domestic market indicates that the demand itself will ensure the present rate of growth in the years to come.”
They added, “If the Indian industry can leverage its IT strengths and grab its opportunities coming its way, it is not inconceivable that India can be a major hub to provide the software, integrated solutions and finished products in these fields to the entire world.”
Barcodes
The barcode industry is estimated to be approximately Rs 2.5 billion, and is growing at over 30-35 per cent every year. Hardware (printers and scanners) contribute equally to half the turnover. Consumables (tags, labels and ribbons) account for 35 per cent, and services account for the rest.
The industry comprises about 50 players, with five of them have turnovers in excess of Rs 100 million. About ten other companies have turnovers ranging between Rs 50 million and Rs 100 million.
Notable international suppliers of barcode scanners include Symbol, PSC, Metrologic and Unitech. As far as barcode printers are concerned, Zebra, Intermec, Printronix, Sato, Toshiba and Datamax are international players which have a significant presence in India.
Ean India – an affiliate of Ean International – has played a major role in creating awareness about barcodes by developing and implementing standards across the industry. AIDC Technology Association is an organisation comprising all stakeholders of this technology.
The courier and logistic industries are major users of barcodes. The automotive industry uses barcoding for auto data capture of information about its materials and supplies during receipt, storage, work-in-progress (WIP), dispatch and sales operations.
In retail sales of automotive spare parts and accessories, barcodes are used to facilitate stock control, track and trace, consumption forecasting, etc. Pharmaceuticals and healthcare are other large users of barcodes.
However, the organised retail sector is the largest growth segment for barcodes. Barcodes have been used in major retail sales institutions for a while. Malls and food bazaars, which have proliferated of late, are the key growth drivers in this segment.
Logistics contributes around 10 per cent of the barcode industry. Of the remaining 90 per cent, retail contributes approximately 40 per cent, and around 50 per cent comes from other industries, such as automotive, pharmaceuticals, etc.
Smart Cards
Over the past few years, the awareness of smart cards and its applications has gradually increased among the potential users in India. Significant growth has taken place in wireless cellular applications, retail loyalty applications, healthcare applications, etc.
Several pilot projects have also been implemented for multi-application campus cards, banking, ID, automatic fare collection, toll, healthcare, etc. The Indian smart card market is expected to grow from the current 40 million cards to 400 million cards in the next few years.
Some international players are also showing interest in the smart card market, which is dominated by companies like Schlumberger, Gemplus, G&D, Obethur, VCT and Orga. Shonkh, Rolta, Smartchip, CMS, Siemens (SISI), CA Satyam and E-Cube are the major system integrators.
STMicroelectronics, Philips, Infineon, Reneseas and Atmel are the chip manufacturers with a significant presence in India. Through the SIM card market has driven the growth in the last five years, the growth rate in the banking and retail sectors could increase in the coming years.
The usage in the transport and healthcare sectors is also expected to increase. However, the industry is looking at the government usage and the national identification project for a spiralling growth in the next few years.
Biometrics
As both the private and public sector organisations search for more secure authentication methods, they increasingly become aware of biometrics as the technology for near-foolproof security.
It may not be long before all password and card-based systems, which are currently in vogue, get replaced with biometric devices. The biometric market in India is estimated to be just over Rs 1.5 billion, and is growing at anywhere between 70 per cent and 100 per cent.
While there is a growing demand for both physiological and behavioural biometric devices, fingerprint recognition is currently the hot favourite. The lack of infrastructure, standardisation in the industry and high costs and duties are impediments in the growth of the industry.
Most of the biometric hardware is currently being imported from such countries as the United States, Germany and Israel. Of late, China has also emerged as an importer. But Indian manufacturers have also launched fingerprint scanners in the market.
RFID
Globally, RFID is being driven by a group of researchers and businessmen of Indian origin, and provides the country an opportunity to export software and services. The technology finds wide applications in fleet management, inventory and asset management, packaging, etc.
Many industry segments use it, but the areas of focus are retail and supply chain management. With the advent of the electronic product code (EPC) – a set of standards that weaves RFID technology into a numbering scheme – the technology got a new impetus.
As the benefits of the RFID-EPC technology become evident, many industries are investing their research efforts into product development to lower the cost of RFID tags and iron out the teething problems.
India has a highly skilled workforce and a strong information technology base, which makes it the natural choice for companies engaged in RFID product development. The country is also a centre for the execution of RFID implementations for the entire Asia-Pacific region.
The country is also a huge market for RFID solutions. The interest in the technology is evident in the export and pharmaceutical sectors. And as a part of the supply chain for multinational corporations, the Indian companies are also expected to adopt the RFID-EPC technology.
Logistics
According to Print-Packaging.com, “India's logistics sector attracted investments worth Rs 23,200 crore in the first half of 2008. It outclassed some key sectors, including aviation (Rs 20,890 crore), metals and mining (Rs 8,500 crore) and consumer durables (Rs 6,000 crore).”
“Mumbai is the preferred location for the development of logistics parks. The investment on these is estimated to be worth approximately $200 million. In the pipeline is the development of seven to eight logistics parks covering a total area of about 600 acres around Mumbai,” they said.
The organisers said a large number of special economic zones (SEZs) have necessitated the development of logistics for the domestic as well as the international trade. The Indian logistics industry is expected to grow at the rate of 15-20 per cent per annum.
“By 2015, it is expected to reach revenues of approximately $385 billion. The market share of organised logistics players is also expected to double to about 12 per cent during the same period,” they said.
About 110 logistics parks spread over approximately 3,500 acres at an estimated cost of $1 billion are expected to be operational. An estimated 45 million sq ft of warehousing space with an estimated investment of $500 million is expected to be developed by various logistics companies.
Bulk packaging
The Indian bulk packaging industry started making significant strides in the 1990s, when a number of players acquired bulk handling capabilities, which enabled them to compete in the globalised world.
The market really took off in the new millennium, when growth was driven both by exports and an increase in the domestic production of agricultural output and food. In the first six or seven years, the growth rate was around 28 per cent; it eventually settled down to 15-20 per cent per annum.
The rigid packaging industry which comprises drums and containers made of plastic, metal, fibre board and composite material is growing at 13 per cent per annum. Many in the industry have been migrating to plastics of late, including a number of metal drum manufacturers.
The plastic drum market, which is estimated to be worth Rs 5 billion and has six million units, is growing at over 16 per cent. In contrast, the steel drum market – estimated to be worth Rs 2 billion – is growing at about two per cent and has about 10 million units.
The fibre drum and composites market, valued at Rs 4 billion, is growing at 10 per cent. The flexible bulk packaging industry – including woven sacks, leno bags, wrapping fabric and flexible intermediate bulk containers (FIBC) – is worth Rs 140 billion and growing at over 20 per cent.
In fact, FIBC containers are expected to grow threefold in the next five years, riding on increased industrial production and a shift toward higher-value containers which offer enhanced performance and supply chain efficiency.
The recession provided Indian FIBC manufacturers an opportunity as their American and European counterparts' output decreased, and many outsourced the process to India, adding an important to the growth story.
