How Dev Print & Pack, India is handling the packaging boom

Samir Patel started his print career with a screen printing unit in 2004. Patel says that print is the only industry where entrepreneurs can get started with a small investment of as little as Rs 1,000, before growing as large as they like. “I did not have enough funds when I started out, but today we have invested more than Rs 35-crore in the two plants in Santej.” 

“20% of our print jobs do not require finishing, but the rest does. Anybody can do the 20% print jobs, but we have a reputation for the quality of our carton finishes, which is a good 80%. This investment, which also has the ability to produce 4- and 6-corner cartons, both for mono cartons as well as corrugation cartons, will enable us to build on the strength with increased capacity, quality, and speed,” says Samir Patel, the director of DPPL. “The new BOBST equipment will also be faster for makereadies and will enable us to optimize settings for repeat print runs.” 

Patel started the Ahmedabad City-based packaging business in 2016, 12 years after he set up Dev Offset, which specialized in printing commercial and wedding cards.

Since the business was founded in 2016, the primary packaging plant has been based in a 45,000 sqft site which houses a BOBST NOVACUT 106E die cutter and a BOBST VISIONFOLD 110A-2 folder gluer, offering HHS cold glue and hotmelt gluing. 

According to Patel, the company began with a conversion of around 60-70 tons per month in January 2017. In 8 months that number went up to around 140-150 tons. “We have been growing at a good clip and are today converting around 450 tons of paper, paperboard, and kraft paper.” 

The Expansion 
The second plant, a 20,000 sqft building, is where the new BOBST machinery is housed. DPPL specializes in mono carton packaging for the pharma and FMCG segments, as well as e- and g-flute corrugation packaging. The second plant is used to produce corrugation packaging. 

A Smithers Pira report, The Future of Digital Print for Packaging to 2019, said that conversion of corrugated board was 90 million tonnes in 2013 and would increase by over 22 million tonnes by 2019. The majority of prints will remain analog flexo and offset after Patel invested in offset technology. “The last 24 months have been a productive period for DPPL. We have seen significant growth of 30% in the packaging business. That said, our commercial side of the business, particularly the wedding card job segment, took a hit. However, that loss has been offset by the growth in the packaging business. In April 2020, we invested in a BOBST SP 102 kit. It was perhaps the right decision, considering the growth we have seen recently,” says Patel. 

The Rs 28-crore turnover DPPL employs around 125 people including office staff, with extra contract and freelance staff used as required. 

BOBST EXPERTFOLD tech-specs 
​​​​​​​BOBST EXPERTFOLD can produce cartons at speed of 450 m/min, and is equipped to run specialty 4- and 6-corner boxes and microflute corrugated cartons. BOBST EXPERTFOLD is a future-ready machine, capable of retrofitting ACCUCHECK and ACCUBRAILLE systems. The ACCUCHECK is a print inspection system fitted inline in the folder-gluer. It can inspect and eject various print defects such as color variations, print to cut registration, missing texts, scratches, damages to boxes. The ACCUBRAILLE is a rotary embossing braille system, which can produce up to 85,000 B/hr and a job changeover in 5-7 mins. 

BOBST India Pvt. Ltd