The pandemic taught us how to adopt effective planning: Sanjay G Joshi, Printmark

The COVID-19 period and consequent lockdown and demand and supply disruptions along with changing consumption trends and investment patterns has vastly affected the world, with the printing industry being no exception. Speaking about his experience, Sanjay G Joshi, Printmark, comments, “We saw the entire Print Industry being restructured with re-planning processes and man power.”

He however didn’t see much impact of postponement of investment decisions as he adds, “The Printing Industry changed towards being more profession with implementation of standardization of processes, giving corporate touch to operations and utilising 100% of staff & machinery efficiently. The pandemic, in a way, taught us how to adopt effective planning to overcome difficult times.”

According to Sanjay, the pandemic immensely affected the industry especially the commercial printing. He observed many adverse changes in the Industry. The commercial print industry suffered because of labour problem; many jobs got turned into short run jobs from previously being long run jobs. With the surge in the demand for label and packaging materials, jobs themselves got shifted towards food packaging mono cartons and labels. Another key change he observed was the move towards automation, chiefly because of unavailability of labour. “Majority of printers in Karnataka work with staff that are not professionally trained but are engaged in technical jobs. It is difficult to get technical people who are capable of understanding the technology in a short time,” he asserts.

Sanjay further thinks that the gap of about 6 months for the regular print jobs to restart after the pandemic induced shift in demand is a huge gap, especially for the service industry like printing. “We considered ourselves as partner, rather than vendors, to our customers. The printing industry adopted automation and process streamlining to achieve quality and less wastage along with addressing the labour shortage issues,” he explains.

“We focused on changing market requirements and initiated complete survey for printing and packaging demands of the food industry to move forward,” he says.

He closely followed new demands and adapted his business to the changes to continue serving his customers. “As the market requirements increased for labels and packaging due to the growth of packaged food industry and pharma, we adopted new methods and changes in our business accordingly,” says Sanjay who now looks forward to the conditions returning to normal. “I see things will come back to normal as schools and colleges restart. The Young generation will start coming out and business will be more challenging,” he concludes.