In the last couple of years, Pune-based packaging machinery manufacturer Nichrome has diversify ed beyond its core expertise of offering form fill seal solutions. According to the company’s executive director, Mrunal Joshi, the journey so far has been highly successful.
“Nichrome has been a pioneer in manufacturing form fill seal machines in India for pouches. A couple of years back we decided to offer additional solutions and provide complete end-to-end solutions to our customers. We now offer secondary packaging solutions as well bottle, jar and tin filling lines. All these new offerings have been very well accepted by the market,” Joshi said during the India International Dairy Expo (IIDE) 2019 that was held in Mumbai recently.
In terms of the customer base too, the company has diversified beyond food to pharma and speciality products such as seeds and other agricultural products. “We are growing in multiple segments with a much diversified customer base and a varied product line,” she added.
The company has been dominant in the manufacturing of form fill seal machinery for pouches but now offers stacking and wrapping solutions, HDPE bag filling system, bottle filling lines for liquid products, bottle filling lines for solid products and tin can filling lines. In secondary packaging segment, Nichrome offers solutions such case packing machines, bailing machines and crating machines.
Commenting on the reasons for Nichrome’s success in these new areas in such a short span of time, Joshi said, “Nichrome is a highly trusted brand and customers today want credible partners. This is the most important reason that customers have trust in what we offer.”
At IIDE 2019, Nichrome displayed the bottle filling line for liquids. The machine can have two heads to as many as 10 heads, as per customer demand and requirement and can be used to pack items such as flavored water, water, energy drinks, butter milk, ghee and shampoo. The machine also has integrated foil seal- ing and capping functions.
Another machine that the company displayed at the expo was the HDPE bag filling system. This machine can fill HDPE, woven and PP bags.
As shared by Joshi, Nichrome has had a very good financial year 2018-2019 with the success of its core FFS products as well as the new product line. The current 2019-2020 financial year too is expected to be even better as the company consolidates its position in new segments and prepares to offer new products.
The company has developed a vertical doypack machine for standy pouches. According to Joshi, the advantage is that the vertical machine offers much faster speeds that the horizonal machines.
“The machine was launched in September last year and is now the first machine ready to be dispatched. The first installation is expected in a couple of months,” she shared.
Nichrome will also focus on its partnership with Italy’s Tecnovac to offer tray sealing machines.
“Last financial year was good for us and this year will be better than last year,” Joshi concluded.
The Covid-19 pandemic led to the country-wide lockdown on 25 March 2020. It will be two years tomorrow as I write this. What have we learned in this time? Maybe the meaning of resilience since small companies like us have had to rely on our resources and the forbearance of our employees as we have struggled to produce our trade platforms.
The print and packaging industries have been fortunate, although the commercial printing industry is still to recover. We have learned more about the digital transformation that affects commercial printing and packaging. Ultimately digital will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future.
Web analytics show that we now have readership in North America and Europe amongst the 90 countries where our five platforms reach. Our traffic which more than doubled in 2020, has at times gone up by another 50% in 2021. And advertising which had fallen to pieces in 2020 and 2021, has started its return since January 2022.
As the economy approaches real growth with unevenness and shortages a given, we are looking forward to the PrintPack India exhibition in Greater Noida. We are again appointed to produce the Show Daily on all five days of the show from 26 to 30 May 2022.
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