Commercial Printing has been the worst hit segment, Akshay Kaushal

Commercial Printing has been the worst hit segment, Akshay Kaushal

Executive Director – Sales, PrOvin Technos Pvt Ltd, shares his experience during the recent COVID-19 times, lockdown and post lock down in a talk with PRESSIdeas.

“During the lockdown, the biggest challenge for the companies was to remain afloat with virtually no cash flow, cancelled projects and so on,” says Akshay Kaushal, Executive Director – Sales, PrOvin Technos. One of the many of its fallbacks being consumption getting limited to only essential items, companies had to reorganise and reallocate their funds judiciously. “The definition of judiciously has been taken to a whole new level now,” quips Akshay. “This pandemic has enlightened our senses in ways which otherwise would not have been possible to look upon in normal course. Apart from this, remote working became a new normal and recovery has been very slow to start with. With the exception of Packaging and Labels which saw positive signs almost through the whole period, other things are now steadily picking up. It seems the resumption of normal business operations might get delayed to next 12-18 months instead of the expected 6-12 months,” he adds.

“During the lockdown, all the activities in the supply chain related to essential items were operational. However, resource and raw material scarcity was a big challenge to face for many companies operational during the lockdown. Logistics was another hurdle. Post Lockdown, the situation has eased up and things are now getting back to normal working,” he continues. Speaking about challenges he adds that there are logistics problems still present internationally – multifold increase in transportation cost, cargo unavailability are the areas of major concern.

According to Akshay, Commercial Printing has been the worst hit segment. Though the packaging and labelling industry has done pretty well, changing product and customer preferences created a drive for more hygiene oriented packaging and single use product packaging. Moreover, the increase in demand through e-commerce sites has led to an increase in the demand for corrugated and folding carton packaging. Short run Flexible packaging has seen increased demand. The most common example is the rise in food and beverage delivery services which requires such disposable packaging solutions. “As far as label industry is concerned, they play an important part in the product packaging and with the outbreak of this pandemic. The demand for hygiene related product labels, pharma labels, e-commerce and essential items has picked up handsomely,” states Akshay.

With postponement of key investment and installation decisions, the impact has been huge. “The year 2019 itself was a year of uncertainty for many which our GDP also reflected. It was pretty bad in terms of new installations taking place throughout and with 2020, it has been a record all time low. With such an unprecedented situation at everyone’s doorstep, customers and solution providers had to support each other in one way or the other to minimise the effect as much as possible. From the solution providers’ point of view, we have tried to extend our maximum support to our customers as was possible with special support schemes in place to help minimise customer expenses, remote and on the field service support throughout to keep them up and running. Our customers have responded in the same way to us and have been extremely accommodating and chipped in with timely payments. With the positive relationship between the respective solution providers, customers and their customers henceforth and the commitment to help each other to bounce back has influenced the industry in a positive way to climb back to normal. Worst has gone past and now from here it will only be an upward climb,” concludes Akshay on this positive note.

PrOvin is the distributor for MHI-PPM Heatset web offset presses, RMGT range of sheet-fed offset presses, Miyakoshi range of Narrow web presses, Lithec Inline colour control system and UV Energy smart UV Systems in India and Nepal.