Expanding packaging Horizons

The undaunted packaging leader is expanding its horizons by entering different market segments. Mrunal Joshi, executive vice-chairman, Nichrome unpacks the roadmap.

Nichrome a leader in the flexible packaging world, recently ventured into other segments, can you please elaborate.

Nichrome, today a dominant player in the food packaging sector ventured into Vertical Form Fill Seal machines (VFFS) as its core technology. Horizontal Form Fill Seal machine (HFFS) and Multilane was the next technology that put Nichrome in the forefront to fulfill market demands of various types of product applications and pouch formats. These pouches were mainly standee and re-sealable type, four-side or three-side packs, small sachets and stick packs enabling customers put their products on the shelves with better branding and for the convenience of the consumers.

Nichrome partnered with companies from Spain &US for developing multi-lane and horizontal machine technology. This enabled us to provide best of the best packaging solutions with European high-end technology at Indian market price. This was a win-win proposition for Indian Food Manufacturers and Nichrome. Our machine technology with its agility, precision and international quality adherence attracted African markets too. Next level of offering was tray packing which too is on the verge of revolutionizing the food packaging industry in India. Tray packaging brings our sumptuous sweets, namkeens, and ready-to-eat food in an irresistible pack. The tray packaging is done under modified atmosphere with a great deal of R&D done to extend the shelf-life of the food product compared with regular packaging. The development also includes regulating the volume & pressure of inert gas and vacuum required for food products in a tailored fashion. This Italian technology for rigid packaging completely serves the purpose to keep the soft & delicate food products safe & intact.

Studying the needs of our end customers, we developed yet another specialty, Jar and Bottle Filling and Packaging System. These include packaging products like tea, herbs and spices, protein powders packaged in glass bottles, pet jars or tins. This machine also supports packaging of powder, granular products, milk, other liquids and viscous products like purees, and personal and home care products.

Understanding of the market requirements and our continuous R&D efforts, has lead Nichrome to provide integrated packaging solutions. The end-to-end packaging solutions include product handling, primary & secondary packaging right upto the warehousing digitization and transport.

Indian markets have a unique demand of secondary packaging for flexible pouches. We provide automatic or semi-automatic secondary packaging solutions for this. Products like spices, grains, wheat flour that are packed in 50 gm to 2 kg packs or as chain/string of pouches are folded or stacked, packed into secondary packages, shrink wrapped, and then packed into gunny bags or boxes ready to be transported. Our end-end packaging solution automates this entire chain. This is the solution to overcome the challenges like recurring labor cost, labor dependency/availability and ample possibility of human error in contrast to automation. Customers are rapidly adapting to secondary packaging especially for handling flexible packages. With our strong market presence and decades of best services provided, customers are now getting inclined to these end-end packaging solutions from us.

Nichrome is now venturing into carton, tin and bottle packaging systems, how does Nichrome stand apart from existing players?

Customers look for reliable partners and prefer long standing relationships. Nichrome has been in the packaging space for over 4 decades and has earned a trust of thousands of our customers. The Tin and Jar filling solutions that we offer are designed by the packaging and filling experts and backed by our strong infrastructure and 8 service centers across India.

In recent years, many low cost players have entered the packaging market. What is Nichrome’s strategy to retain its leadership position?

Huge number of small & medium sized companies is commoditizing the VFSS technology. Our strategy “Innovation Every Moment (IEM)” helps us retain the leadership position. Our strong R&D team works round the clock diligently to achieve higher speeds, higher accuracies, innovative pack formats and faster ROI to our customers. Our much in-demand packaging machine Maxima packs as much as 400 packs/min currently holds the best packaging record in India.

‘Data Over Internet’ our latest path breaking solution in line with the Industry 4.0, digitizes the entire packaging operation; to generate data from packing machines, analyze and provide reports through DOI for the benefit of the customers. Our technological expertise and IEM strategy has earned us the leadership position in the packaging market.