David Savastano, Ink World Editor12.10.09
For ink manufacturers, the printing market in India is one of great opportunity. While international ink manufacturers have expanded into the Indian market, domestic ink manufacturers have a decided advantage.
Later, Mr. Nalin Mehta, the present owner, continued the efforts to make V.G.Color the forerunner amongst the family-owned businesses manufacturing printing inks.
Flueron Inks was initially developed as an export-oriented offset printing ink unit, but it quickly expanded into a diverse portfolio of products, including silk screen inks for rigid plastics and metal decoration inks. They also manufacture their varnishes for captive consumption, thereby having complete control over their formulations.
With a technical staff which shares more than 100 years of combined experience in the offset, silk screen and metal deco industry, the challenges faced by Flueron are handled with a strong technical focus and quickest respose time.
One of the keys for Flueron Inks is its outstanding emphasis on service. Flueron Inks has local as well as outstation matching centers, which focus on serving customers locally, thereby reducing the response time for customers and providing more than ink, service. In addition to its headquarters in Mumbai, Flueron Inks has offices in the Western Zone (Ahmedabad) and South Zone (Chennai and Hyderabad), and is also planning an upcoming local office for the North Zone (New Delhi).
With clients in South East Asia, South Africa, Canada and the U.S, Flueron Inks looks forward to set up a base in the west to accomodate the needs of its North American customers, setting up local labs and warehousing to service clients throughout the U.S.
Roopal Packaging Inc. (RPI), owned and headed by Sunil Shah, has been appointed the local point of contact in the U.S. Mr. Shah has worked with top international ink companies through out his extensive career in the graphic arts industry, and is an experienced and a focused business partner.
“With a definite advantage in pricing structure provided through innovative solutions leveraged with comparitively lower labor costs, the ‘win win’ situation for the local printers in the US is definitely an advantage,” Mr. Mehta observed.
In addition to service, Flueron Inks has been successful in focusing on quality, the most important aspects of their mission statement, “Qualitative Service... Quantitative Excellence.”
“Our company’s approach has been straight and simple,” said Mr. Mehta. “The quality of the products is a top priority. Our customers render us with their trust, and we in return provide them prompt service with a very high quality product. Our aim is to provide custom inks to our customers depending on their needs. We take pride in altering our products to best suit the customers needs.
“Providing every printer in the world with an standard formulation could never work with our set of principles,” Mr. Mehta added. “Being in the industry for more than 35 years, my experience has been that with every printing equipment, there are as many as 10 to 15 key variables, and hence, one formulation does not fit all.”
With the ever-changing global scenario, Flueron has continously updated its incoming raw material quality assurance procedures and outgoing QC to suit the needs of its customers and customers’ customers.
Flueron was set up to be an environmentally focused company. Accordingly, it has product lines which are more than 50% renewable, and are working towards providing all their products within the CONEG and REACH compliance, another benefit for its customers.
Mr. Mehta noted that although competitors in the Indian market have been wary in introducing newer concepts such as soy inks, Flueron Inks has exceeded the quality expectations and provided “greener” solutions to the Indian printing market.
“Today, FIPL takes pride in the fact that it has not only lived up to the high standards and expectations set by its founder, but also been successful in implementing environmentally friendly changes in its products and processes,” Mr. Mehta said. “One amongst the very few to introduce the ‘green inks’ concept in India, Flueron Inks are proud to introduce their ‘Spectra’ inks to their local as well as international clientele, which are less than 15% VOC, BRC 50 labeled, SOY seal certified and CONEG compliant.”
Flueron Inks’ competition is with environmentally focused and quality conscious printing ink manufacturers. They believe in working in tandem with the regulations, and strives to excel the set benchmarks of EH&S.
Flueron Inks’ R&D, production and marketing, the three key business groups, have been extensively focusing on “green ink, clean ink” concept and accordingly, have been successful in turning printers’ attention to the idea of environmentally friendlier printing solutions.
“Our environment, health and safety team always keeps itself updated, which in turn pushes innovation through our R&D group to be compliant with all local and international regulations,” Mr. Mehta said. “The group presently is working to understand the CSPIA regulations and is involved with other printing ink manufacturer’s safety groups to enforce stricter laws within the AIPIMA.
“Flueron started serving the “green” printing niche late in 2007, and it has now grown into a full-fledged conscious effort by the printers throughout the country, and is well appreciated by our loyal customers,” Mr. Mehta concluded.