We are continuously keyed on all requirements of customers

Subnil has a hard-earned name in the packaging industry for the superior quality of its tube fillers. Rajesh Subramaniam, Managing Director, Subnil, tells more to Sachin Jagdale

Who are your pharmaceutical clients in India and abroad?

We have a long list of clients. Alkem, Astra-Zeneca, Cadilla, Dr.Reddy's, FDC, Glaxo Smithkline, Glenmark, Himalaya, H M Roussel, Indoco, IPCA, J B Chem, Knoll, Pfizer, PZ Cussons, Ranbaxy, Wockhardt, Zandu, Gopaldas Visram are our clients in India.

What is the use of tube fillers to the pharma companies? Besides pharma companies who are your other clients?

Tube fillers are mainly used for filling ointments and lotions in the Pharma segments. Cosmetic, food and personal care industry are the other areas where we supply our tube fillers. Customers here include Hindustan Lever, Procter & Gamble, Dabur to name a few.

What are the features of your packaging machines?

We are the only manufacturer in Asia which offers a complete line for Tube packaging line. The line consists of a Tube filler + Cartoner + Bundler + Casepacker. Lines from 35 to 300 tubes/min are available.

The heart of a tube filler is the filling system and our design of vertical dosing with bottom-up filling using a shut-off nozzle ensures a fill accuracy of ±1%. All our continuous motion cartoners have a rotary carton pick-up and online pre-folding system. This eliminates the need for pre-folded cartons and even not-so-good cartons work on our cartoners. Our bundlers can handle BOPP as well as HMHDPE film and our casepackers offer different orientations of product loading making it very versatile.

Could you tell us about the cost effectiveness of your packaging machines?

We are leaders in this segment in the whole of Asia and cost effectiveness within Asia is not a big problem as our machines are superior to the others that are around. When compared to European machines, we are almost one third the cost and still very close in technology and versatility.

What is the difference between the requirements of your Indian and foreign clients? How difficult is it to handle industry specific requirements?

The main requirement of a foreign customer, besides maximum safety, is minimum downtime of machines. This is where our expertise in Tube packaging comes in. We ensure that transfer of products from tube filler to cartoner and further on is absolutely smooth. And intermediate conveyors, interlocks between machines and other back-up collection arrangements are provided to ensure that the throughput coming out of the tube filler becomes the throughput of the line.

Since we are focused on Tube packaging lines, we have been working on only this for 20 of the 25 years we have been in existence. Hence, we are continuously keyed on all requirements of customers and the industry and keep upgrading our technology and features.

India is becoming the of hub international pharma industry. How important is this development from the packaging industry point of view?

India has already become the central point of sourcing packaging machineries, for the growing economies as also the developed nations. The focus has shifted to Asia in a big way and India is leading the way along with Korea, China and Taiwan.

How do you handle the ever-changing needs of clients?

Our vision is to be amongst the global leaders in our segment. This is being at the back of our mind, there is always a continuous push to understand customer requirements. We don't intend aping the Europeans in offering high-end technology which the growing economies don't need and are more focused on making lives easier for personnel in charge of operating and maintaining our machines. After all, this is the age of faster-time-to-market.

Tell us about your post delivery services.

Most of our service technicians have come up from the ranks. We feel, knowing the machine in and out is absolutely necessary for trouble-shooting. Since 50% of our sales are exports, we have a good set of trained technicians who travel to places as far as Australia, UK and Europe besides Africa and Asia. Most of our partners in many countries have their own service set-up as well and we train their people at our factory. We have recently started stocking spares with them too. This assures customers of an immediate back-up in case of downtime.

What are your future plans?

We intend being amongst the global leaders in the Tube packaging segment. Our new 300 tubes / minute line will be launched in March and that will be a big boost to our product range. Thereafter we will continue to closely work on our machines to ensure increase in throughput with a minimum downtime. Being focused only on a few machines always helps and this is what is going to keep is in good stead to achieve the global leadership status.

sachin.jagdale@expressindia.com