Small printers — 3

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With many printers adopting the diversification strategy for survival, Impress Offset has chosen an offbeat trail for uplifting the industry, Aakriti Agarwal reports. Impress Offset, in Noida began its production in 1984, and has now installed capacity to print in single and multi colours with sheet fed offset printing machines, and an inhouse binding unit. With 520 square meters of built up space divided on two floors, one part is dedicated to printing and pre press while the other houses the binding equipment. Co-owned by two brothers Sidharth Prakash and Saket Prakash, the company is primarily a book production unit.

We spoke with Saket on issues ranging from employment, skilled labour, training and economics. He is hopeful and ready to battle the tough times that they are faced with currently. Saket says that the cost reduction exercise done by many customers during the present economic slump, is sometimes unreasonable and it becomes difficult to manage the same quality of printed material at reduced rates.

Asked how they would survive the coming years in the circumstances, he replied that the skill shortage in the industry is huge. Companies are concerned  that they have to hand over expensive machines in  untrained and inexperienced hands, spend time and money to train an  employee, who is likely to leave them once he gets hands-on experience. Thus Impress Offset is in the process of coming up with a training program for skilled labour, with basic literacy and education. The trainees will undergo an elaborate training program for three months and then be given on-the-job training on different machines for a month. This will also give the new entrants to the industry an opportunity to learn machine operations and functions in a systematic manner instead of the haphazard learning by traditional methods. “Training is the need of the hour,” says Saket of his program, the development of which is supervised by his brother Siddharth, an offset printing diploma holder from the London College of Printing, with hands-on training at Heidelberg in machine operation and maintenance. He has also worked on printing machines in India and abroad. Impress offset has in the past been involved in sheet fed offset printing skill training programs. The course syllabus is in the development stage. Saket Prakash says that most of the industry is facing problems with the instability and inefficiency of machine operators and training will help align skilled workers and thus bring down cost of operations in these hard times.

Saket agrees that the production costs have risen substantially over a period of time, and higher productivity is the only way out, as the customers are always looking for financially cheaper options for printing. With government and private orders, Impress Offset is quite hopeful of a more stable future for themselves and the printing industry.

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