Publishing, print, and converting – growth and sustainability

The family-owned Nageen Group in Meerut is currently managed by its second and third generations with Mohit Jain as the managing director and his son Vatsal Jain as the director. According to them, Nageen Print-Pack is the group’s most important component, while Nageen Prakashan, Nageen Edtech, Chota Kingdom, Nageen Art Gallery, and Mittimate are its other subsidiaries.

Now a subsidiary of Nageen Group, Nageen Prakashan was established in 1966 by Nageen Chand Jain. The firm evolved from printing and publishing to packaging. It publishes textbooks for the state board of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, ISC, ICSE, CBSE, and other boards, as well as polytechnic and competitive entrance exams. It has published books in practically every field, including science, commerce, humanities, drawing, and painting. Its competitive entrance test books are designed to meet the demands of students preparing for engineering and medical entrance examinations, including the JEE, NEET, UPSEE, and other competitive exams.

Nageen Print Pack started in 2020 in Salarpur in Meerut is a state-of-the-art printer and packaging converter. With experienced personnel, good technology, several well-configured multicolor offset presses, screen printing, and special effects including spot UV and embossing it produces monocartons, corrugated and rigid boxes, and promotional POP standees.

Nageen’s director Vatsal Jain, says, “Our 4-color, 6-color, and 10-color offset presses, as well as screen printing equipment, are well-maintained at our facility. With these machines, we can print metallics, Pantone spot colors, UV and drip-off coatings, and many special effects.”

With designing to postpress facilities in-house, the company uses CAD software and a Kongsberg sample maker for carton and die designs. And for its offset plate production, it uses Kodak Q800 and Cron CtPs. In the pressroom, it has two sheetfed Komori Lithrone 4-color presses, a 4-color Sakurai, a 10-color Heidelberg SM102, and a 6-color Planeta Super Variant. Its web offset presses include a Press Line 578mm cut-off 4+4 color, a Press Line 508mm cut-off 2+2 color, and an Accurate 578mm cut-off 4+4 press. 

In finishing and converting there are machines for folding, laminating, die-cutting, hot foil stamping, embossing, folding-gluing, book-binding, and trimming. At the recently PrintPack India in Greater Noida, Nageen purchased an SGFM-1450 eFlute laminator from Sodhisons and two Bobst machines – a Novacut 106 E die-cutter and an Expertfold 110 A2 folder gluer. Nageen also plans to install a fully automatic corrugation plant at the same plant.

While the primary focus is printing on a variety of substrates, the company wants to enter digital printing and also work towards sustainability. Jain explains, “Upcoming packaging trends aim at sustainability, and we are also working towards this. Every time we work on something new, we look at its sustainability so that it will not produce any pollution and the material used should be recyclable and reusable. We are using materials that do not harm the environment.”

Commenting about the Covid-19 pandemic, Jain comments, “The printing industry has seen a setback, and many publishers have diversified into the packaging vertical. We also diversified our business in 2020 into packaging, but as we have seen, the black clouds never stuck in our heads. The crisis is now vanishing, and we all are seeing a ray of hope. PrintPack, which happened after a long gap was successfully organized. Many printers were elated and took part to advance their business prospects.”

The company’s ed-tech subsidiary makes educational toys and games for introductory and kindergarten classes. The Chota Kingdom brand consists of wooden, DIY, and brain teaser toys. Puzzles, MDF (medium-density fiberboard) toys, board games, and model construction, are all made of paper under the Mittimate brand. 

Jain says, “The toys we are making for the Montessori students are having a huge impact on their learning new things quickly and efficiently. Our long experience in the education sector has taught us how children learn about their environment and pass on general information. The toys and board games urge them to think critically and the DIY models motivate their creativity.”

The Covid-19 pandemic led to the country-wide lockdown on 25 March 2020. It will be two years tomorrow as I write this. What have we learned in this time? Maybe the meaning of resilience since small companies like us have had to rely on our resources and the forbearance of our employees as we have struggled to produce our trade platforms.

The print and packaging industries have been fortunate, although the commercial printing industry is still to recover. We have learned more about the digital transformation that affects commercial printing and packaging. Ultimately digital will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future.

Web analytics show that we now have readership in North America and Europe amongst the 90 countries where our five platforms reach. Our traffic which more than doubled in 2020, has at times gone up by another 50% in 2021. And advertising which had fallen to pieces in 2020 and 2021, has started its return since January 2022.

As the economy approaches real growth with unevenness and shortages a given, we are looking forward to the PrintPack India exhibition in Greater Noida. We are again appointed to produce the Show Daily on all five days of the show from 26 to 30 May 2022.

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