The Hindu Business Line : Autoprint Machinery witnessing robust growth

THE growth in literacy rate and the search for new avenues to disseminate information seem to be propelling the growth of the mini offset printing (MOP) machinery manufacturing industry in the country.

The Coimbatore-based Autoprint Machinery Manufactures (P) Ltd (AMMPL) expects the industry to grow at an annual rate of 20 per cent for the next 3-5 years.

The company, which clocked a group turnover of about Rs 34 crore during last year and claims the largest market share in the segment in the country, plans to invest about Rs 3 crore to Rs 4 crore in the next one year.

Speaking to Business Line here on Thursday Mr C.N.Ashok, Director-Commercial, AMMPL, which was recently awarded the Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award 2003 for small-scale organisations, said his company entered the business of producing MOP machines in 1993 based on indigenous technology.

From the production of 13 machines in its first year of operation, it has grown to producing two machines every day now. The value of machines produced ranges from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 20 lakh each.

About 55 per cent sales went to letterpress printers, while new entrepreneurs accounted for 23 per cent of the sales. Existing small offset printers had a 14 per cent share of the company's sales and repeat orders accounted for 8 per cent of the sales and these figures were as at the end of March 31, 2004.

The repeat ordershas now gone up to 23 per cent. The user industry is engaged in the printing of wedding cards/invitation/greeting cards, promotional materials such as leaflets, fliers etc that are inserted into newspapers and stationery.

He pointed out that because of the disorganised nature of the printing industry in the country, quality parameters have not been standardised, leading to customer dissatisfaction. His company has tried to address this issue by organising workshops on how to manage printing presses better. Since it was the smaller printers who later graduate to managing high technology printing machines, scientific management becomes a key engine for growth and people who fail to do so make a mess of their business.

Mr Ashok, commenting on the growth of the MOP machinery industry, said literacy has been a prominent driver of growth of the industry and cited the case of Kerala, which has the highest literary rate, where his company has sold, since inception, 500 printing machines.

Apart from Kerala's literacy rate, the aspiration of the Gulf-returnees for self- employment has been a factor in this development. Tamil Nadu is another State that has recorded a substantial growth in the printing industry.

He said his company has become the largest player in the MOP machinery production with a monthly volume of 60-65 machines. He put the market value of the machines produced by the entire industry catering to this segment at about Rs 90 crore per year and the number of machines produced at about 3300 annually.

He said apart from manufacturing printing machines, the company has also started to cater to post-printing requirements by producing numbering machines for sequential numbering, bar-coding and for collating automatically.

He expected post-printing automation segment to grow at 25 per cent annually. The company has, so far, invested about Rs 10 crore in machinery manufacture and plans to invest Rs 3 crore -Rs 4 crore in the next one year in machinery, building and R and D.

The export markets such as Turkey and Greece were witnessing robust growth and in components and sub-assemblies, UK and US were better. Exports accounted for 15 per cent of the turnover and he expected this to register further growth since the signs for exports were "very positive", he added.