Faridabad-based Multitec, the country’s No 1 Label press manufacturer, recently announced the installation of its 100th label press. This includes installations of its four models, namely, Ecoflex, Ecosmart, Ecoflex VSi and Ecoflex VSi Servo.

Amit Ahuja, director, Multitec insisted that this number corresponds to only label printing presses, not any other machinery. “Some Indian manufacturers claim 100+ installations including slitter rewinders, computer forms presses, etc, which we were also manufacturing up to 2012 and then stopped. If this count is to be done, Multitec has over 1,500 installations,” said Ahuja. He was vocal on the point how these manufacturers are trying to confuse the market and are lying about the statistics.
 
The landmark 100th machine has been installed at Tehran, Iran-based company Kalabarchasb, one of the first label printing companies in that country. The 30 plus-year-old setup has nine flexo presses and a host of other finishing equipment. The company, started by Mahboubi has just moved into a new state of the art factory. In the recent years, Mahboubi’s sons Payam and Pooya have taken the company forward with 15-20% growth every year.
 
Multitec started making label presses in 2002. However, according to Ahuja, the real change came about in 2008 when the first Ecoflex was launched. “So technically, this is the 100th label press starting from December 2008 when the first label press was sold,” he said. Thus, it took the company 80 months (from December 2008 to August 2015) to complete the 100 machines mark.
 
For Ahuja, this is just the beginning. “Multitec will continue to deliver innovative products which offer value for money,” he said. What’s more, he wants to score another 50 installations in the next two years. “We are going to close the period between April 2015 and March 2016 with hopefully 21 or 22 presses, of which around eight will be for the export market. We have invested heavily into our machine shop and at various other places in the company to increase our capacity so hopefully we should do two machines a month,” he said.
 
Coming back to Kalabarchasb, Ahuja said this is the second Multitec press at the shopfloor of the Iranian print firm. The first one was installed in 2014 and the second one in August 2015. The first press is an eight-colour VSi, all UV, with cold foil, turnbar, delam-relam, rail system, corona treater, etc. The second one is a 10-colour VSi, all UV press. Both presses have the zero-break waste rewinder.
 
“We found that Multitec’s VSi press can offer us all the modern features a good press should have at a very competitive price,” said Mahboubi of Kalabarchasb. “We evaluated a lot of presses from other international manufacturers but the tests we did on Multitec's press were more than satisfactory. In fact, some unique features of the press which they incorporated based on our suggestions made us take this decision. They could implement some innovative changes very quickly and that is what we wanted from a press manufacturer that they can adapt to a customer’s requirement almost immediately.”