The press gets installed at the Guwahati plant making it the third Nilpeter of the plant.

We can call one of the largest label printing houses of the country Sai Com Code as a Nilpeter printing house with all their three plants based Sonipat, Guwahati and Vapi having the Nilpeter technology at the centre. The latest Nilpeter, a FB350 narrow-web flexo printing press has been installed at the production plant in Guwahati, Assam. The Guwahati plant currently employs around 100 people and up till now had been running two Nilpeter machines successfully.

Sai Com Codes expanded its geographical presence to Guwahati around six years ago to serve the customers faster and better. The Guwahati plant contributes 35% of the company’s total business. With this new installation, they expect this contribution to move up to 40%. It is Guwahati plant’s third Nilpeter making the total of seven from the brand for Sai Com Codes.

“This is the seventh Nilpeter for us and a third in the Guwahati plant,” says an elated Harish Gupta as he informs about all their three plants being a Nilpeter house. The plants are: in Sonipat, Haryana with 4 Nilpeter presses; Guwahati, Assam with 3 Nilpeter presses and Vapi, Maharashtra which runs another brand press). The Sai Com Codes facilities produce high-quality pressure-sensitive labels for various industries, including pharmaceutical, cosmetics, oil, food, liquor, and perfume.

“We are expanding our production capacity to meet the increasing demand. The idea is to be able to print any label at any of our production facilities and be as close to our customers as possible. Being a multi-locational company, we are working on a centralized command model. We are also working towards expanding our geographical presence so this machine can also be used as our backup plan,” says Harish Gupta, when asked about their new Nilpeter.

He reveals that they are planning to expand to new location and would add new machines too. Strongly believing in providing high-quality, value-added products to their customers, they have invested in the latest technologies and kept themselves up to date with the latest market requirements and trends. “This will help us to fulfill our customer requirements with expected quality and value. We grow mutually with our customers; our latest investment in the Nilpeter press in Guwahati is a testament to that. The press will further strengthen our goal of providing high-quality labels to our customers in Assam and its neighbouring states,” stresses Harish Gupta.

The latest Nilpeter in their printing arsenal is an 11-colour printing press with option of doing three colours of rotary screen printing apart from other value additions like cold-foiling, etc. The machine has a special attachment to produce multi-layer labels as well.

It’s a long association with Nilpeter

The Sai Com Codes-Nilpeter association goes a long way back. “You can say we belong to Nilpeter house!” declares Harish Gupta. “It is good to have machines from a single manufacturer – the dealing is easy, the workforce is used to the machine, they know how to run it, who to contact for troubleshooting, how to repair it and many such benefits that come on day to day basis,” he explains.

“Sai Com Codes started its journey with Nilpeter in the year 2007-2008 and today we may be their biggest customer in India,” wonders Harish Gupta.

He is full of praise for Nilpeter which also shows his comfort with the brand, “Though they are an overseas manufacturer, they have a production unit in India which suits us quite well. For us Press downtime is a major concern but Nilpeter’s great regional presence allows their team to provide us parts and services in hours. This local manufacturing gives them an edge to serve us better which also means better efficiency and profitability for us!”

It is interesting that Sai Com Codes has gone for this investment during the tough times of post-pandemic period. “Looking at the current scenario after two years of the pandemic, inflation and fluctuation in prices of raw materials are two major areas of pain for the industry and adding to it is the uncertainty in the market, nobody is willing to give projections – volumes are decreasing. Even we are not running to our full capacity, running at 80% capacity,” sums up Harish Gupta.

He points towards paper prices which are changing almost every fortnight. “But we cannot demand different prices from our customers every fortnight,” he reasons. Long delivery times and extreme price increases in the label supply chain are causing huge problems. Lead time for paper-based label materials is 6 to 7 weeks. He hopes for things to improve in the coming year. “We have invested believing “when going gets tough, the tough needs to get going!” concludes Harish Gupta with a seemingly determined intent.

Speaking on the latest Sai Com Codes installation, Manish Kapoor of Nilpeter India says, “Nilpeter FB line presses are manufactured exclusively in India for the global market. This is indeed a proud achievement for us at Nilpeter India. With over 150 Nilpeter presses running in the region, press downtime is a major concern in today’s competitive market. Being a local, we can provide parts and services in hours, not in days. We have a consistent product line – FA, FB & MO – we keep on building these lines by bringing in new technologies and increasing the automation level. We also manufacture our own gravure printing units and flatbed foil stamping units.”