KBA ties up with Mumbai company for India debut

KBA-Metronic, a part of the German printing solutions major Koenig and Bauer (KBA), is entering the Indian market through a strategic manufacturing and technical collaboration with Control Print India, a Mumbai-based company dealing with coding and marking solutions.

The $2.4 billion KBA group is a world leader in printing press technologies and employs over 8,000 people at various manufacturing locations worldwide.

The alliance is to manufacture coding and marking products of KBA-Metronic in India and initial focus will be to offer digital inkjet printing solutions, an emerging technology in the field of printing, said Shiv Kabra, managing director, Control Print India.

Coding and marking solutions are for printing barcodes, batch numbers, MRP and other basic details in packaging of various products.

Control Print India has started a production facility for ink coders and consumable ink rolls at Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh and the facility will be enlarged with assembling and component manufacturing facilities to manufacture products from the Metronic stable, he said.

"We look forward to good response from India for our products and will invest a couple of million dollars in India in the next few years to augment our presence in association with Control Print," said Helge Hansen, chairman and managing director, KBA-Metronic.

The Indian market for coding and marking solutions is to the tune of about Rs 150 crore, which includes 40 per cent market for equipment. The domestic market is at a nascent stage and is growing compared with the annual business of over $3.6 billion globally, said Kabra.