Pamex review

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Some say, the just concluded Pamex in Delhi from 19 to 22 January, was a bad show or “again” one of the too many small shows with little benefit for the vendors. For others, this was a very good show. Or, at least, a better show than many others. The fact is, that there hasn’t been a Pamex in Delhi for the past 27 years, and there haven’t been too many other non-niche printing shows in the North Indian region apart from PrintPack in January 2009. So even if Pamex cannot deliver on its “inter”-national credo, as a regional fair it appeared to be useful enough to attract between 12 and 16,000 visitors on the 4 days. Although Pamex may not have been profitable for its organisers, it certainly was for many of the exhibitors. By the end of the show, virtually all presses and postpress equipment used for demos at the booths had been sold, and most of the vendors reported good leads on top of the definitive orders placed. At least 20 vendors of digital printers, die-cutting, folding, binding and folding machines reported sales of a few dozen units.

Out of the 140 exhibitors (not counting the 20 or so representing various trade publications and associations), about one third were offering packaging-related products. Next to the vendors representing both Indian and the big international brands, there were exhibitors from Abu Dhabi, Taiwan and the USA, and a dozen from China. A growing number of Indian vendors is also offering Chinese products, particularly finishing equipment such as die cutters, guillotines, coaters, laminators and folder-gluers, but also wide format inkjet printers.

Heidelberg had set up a large aisle with separate and elegant conference rooms for commercial printing, finishing, packaging and Saphira consumables, and an exhibition space showing the printed matter that led up to the National Printing Awards during the show. It also constructed a large PMA-style classroom, where one-hour courses on various subjects were given round-the-clock. Every one of these highly specialised and in-depth classroom sessions was booked out with young audiences eager to polish up their knowledge or learn something new on image resolution, prepress workflows, JDF, gray balance, ink and paper developments, standardisation, press maintenance, flexo technologies and the like. Heidelberg reported several interesting leads and orders, and particular interest for their Prinect workflow engines and Saphira consumables.

At Pamex, Komori had a small stand with its Indian dealers Insight Communications and Print Tools, Sakurai and Hamada were represented at the Kunal booth, while many of the other big names in offset and ancillary equipment were shining by absence. KBA had organised its own party  at a hotel in the city. Instead, there were some interesting Indian presses running, such as the Autoprint Dion 450, a sturdy 4-colour press in the B3 range, Patel’s continuous forms press OM, available in up to 5 printing units, and the Sahil Poly, a one-colour press suitable for printing bags on PE substrates.

The Chinese equipment on show was particularly strong in packaging converting. In digital printing, HP, Kodak and Xerox had large booths with running machines. Xeikon, Océ, Nipson, Konica-Minolta and Xanté were present at the Monotech stand next to a large array of wide format equipment from Canon, GCC, Pixeljet and Skyjet.

The MGI digital press capable of printing on both paper and plastic substrates was shown at the Aura Papers stand. Creed had a running Kodak Digimaster on show which was sold immediately. Ricoh was represented at the Sai stand.

RSG had various printers from Epson, Ricoh/IBM, Konica Minolta and Efi. Epson was also represented at the Arrow Products and TechNova stand. Other Korean and Chinese wide format machines were shown by Arrow, Mehta and some other vendors from across India. In CtP some of the bigger manufacturers were also absent, but TechNova, Kodak, Esko and Basysprint were there. Basysprint with a running machine at the Monotech stand was proud to announce it had sold its 105th machine in India on the last day of the show.

UV coating and curing equipment was shown by Autoprint, Eureka, Jainco, Redlands, Sai-Gutenberg, Suba Solutions and others. Diecutting, creasing, folding, glueing, laminating, embossing, foiling and binding equipment was shown by ASPrint Aids Ltd, Bobst, Cheng Ming, Electro Mec, Eureka, Hy-Tek, LaserDie, Nanbao, Patel, Print Café, Redlands, RGSS, RSG, Sai,Sanjian, Sotech, Trident Packaging Solutions and many of the other vendors on show. Some of the above manufacturers and distributors also represented manufacturers of gravure, flexo and silk screenpresses.

Mumbai-based SLKCG (SL Kulkani CyrilGraphics) is entering the packaging market with a range of equipment from Yawa, a company owned by the Shanghai Electric Group, which is also one of the larger shareholders in Goss International. At Pamex, SLKCG had a fully automatic die cutting and stripping machine on show, the Yawa MW1050A.  Yawa also produces folder-gluers and foilstamping equipment and seems to be already well-established in India.

Materials could be sourced from ABM, AIC, Chemline, ECS, Harison, Jainco, Meilianxing, Radior (France),Sigma, Toyo and others, while there were quite a few vendors of second hand machinery, like Triveni and US-based PanPac. Press inspection equipment was shown by Israeli company Suron, while AGSwith X-Rite and RSG with Techkon showcased their range of colour control devices. A relatively light but very comprehensive ERP/MIS system for printers was shown by Conical, a young software development company from Mumbai.

Esko-Artwork had a large stand atPamex, where it emphasised its integrated packaging software, the CDI Spark imager series, and, in live demos, its latest digital cutting and creasing table for folding carton packaging, the Kongsbergi-XE10. At the beginning of the show, the demo table had already been sold to HBD Packaging Ltd. It has a footprint of around 160 x 160 commonly, with a plotting area of 80 x 110 cm for sheets up to 90 x 120cm.

Although Pamex was a relatively small show, it encompassed many technologies from digital to offset and flexo and gravure with a mix of equipment, software, instrumentation and consumables on show. It demonstrated that small shows can have power and can cover a range of segments such as digital and commercial print, and packaging and stationary converting.

Vendors seemed more disappointed by the lack of scale rather than by the visitor response which was strong from the smaller towns and cities across the country. Some of the big printers also came to the show. Apart from their own healthy curiosity, this was partly because the show was organised by their national federation and also perhaps because of the AIFMP-National Awards for Excellence held on the evening of 20 January. In India, the manufacturers and the visitors are there. But there are too many exhibition organisers, each with their own set of shortcomings.

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