'India annually demands
2.6 million tonnes of newsprints'
–Naveen Badhwar
An update on the current paper market of India and what it holds for future
comes to a clear picture when the man who sees the deeper side of the industry
articulates it. Paper industry stalwart Naveen Badhwar, managing director of
Sedna Business Consultants, narrates his decades of experiences
in the paper industry, witnessing fruitful developments, in an exclusive
conversation with All About Newspapers editor SK Khurana.
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Being the son of an Indian Air
Force serviceman compelled Naveen
Badhwar to travel to where his father
transferred to, whichever part of India,
when he was just a school boy. This was
how he absorbed the habit of travelling
and later travelled to various overseas
countries working in some of the world’s
leading paper companies before settling
down in India following the establishment
of his very own company Sedna Business
Consultants, a core consultancy firm on
the finest range of quality papers of varied
purposes. Today, Sedna Business Consultants
is a one-stop consultancy service provider
to several printing houses, which counts
leading newspaper printers as well.
Strange but true! Naveen didn’t join paper
industry in the first place. He started his
career in a tea estate in Darjeeling. It was
however short lived as he left the job
within a year and joined Thapar Group
at New Delhi in the 1980s. After all, the
big turning point for Naveen in the paper
industry took place in the year 1989 when
he joined Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and
moved to Indonesia where this world’s
leading producer of papers and pulps is
headquartered. As a subsidiary of Sinar
Mas Group, APP was expanding in a
rapid acceleration; in the process, Naveen
engaged in all kinds of international
marketing activities, which included setting
up of branch offices, settlements of agency
agreements in the US, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand and Asia Pacific.
According to Naveen, “APP always worked
in a different swing when it comes to quality
control and distinct production process. We
had access to the forests for selection of
best woods for premium pulp qualities;
opted for the high-end machines to produce
finest range of quality papers.” He adds
that the demand for Sinar coated papers
and highly-glossy papers in India was so
high; even the company’s premium papers
were sold in the country at European prices.
After 12 years at APP, Naveen moved to
Stora Enso (India) in New Delhi as the
managing director of this globally admired
Finnish paper company. His association
with APP and Stora Enso is collectively
a span of 20 years. Finally, it was in the
year 2009 he decided to establish a firm
of his own—the birth of Sedna Business
Consultants.
“Since I could reach whichever corner
of the paper industry, covering a wider
global geography, I always had the desire
to do something new and different towards
offering some fresh benefit to the industry,”
puts in Naveen, while explaining how he
switched to consultancy service, which is
now being accepted by a host of printing
firms all across the country. The company’s
consultations cover different perspectives
of the industry from both domestic and
international angles, educating the industry
people about the modes of operations of
leading groups in the global market and
others, including materials. Sedna Business
Consultants helps international companies
know about the Indian paper market, its
size, business prospects and products in
demand.
Naveen loved to see how papers were born
in the respective mills of the companies
which he led for more than two decades.
He recounts, “Stora Enso has 40 paper
mills and I have visited more than half of
them; and APP has seven mills—two out of
which are where I used to walk around to
see the machines making beautiful papers.”
Bright side of packaging
“Paper demand in India is still going
up, unlike the gradual shrinking in the
western or developed counties. But the
growth is happening particularly in the
packaging segment, faster than the writing
and printing segments. If you look at the
US, Europe and Canada markets, demand
for writing and printing papers is rapidly
coming down. Perhaps the same situation
may grip the Indian market in near future.
However, the current scenario in India is a
bit different. Government is offering huge
incentives to the education sector because
we still have a large rural population who
primarily depend on writing and printing on
papers, irrespective of all modern gadgets
and online activities like tablets, e-mails,
etc, which are still far marooned from
them,” narrates Naveen.
Naveen foresees, “If the country’s economy
is grown in a good rate, it’s likely to
receive abrupt market demands for coated
papers and related activities in the packaging
domain.” He measures out that the current
growth rate between the writing & printing
papers and packaging (coated) papers is
a huge difference. “When the printing &
writing paper segment receives a growth
of 7-8 percent, the packaging segment
correspondingly scores 15-20 percent,” he
mentions, adding that the Indian mills are
now also expanding with a deep focus on
increasing production of coated quality
papers for packaging. In this move, various
players are moving for value additions to
their productions of white grade or chemical
pulps, particularly for high-quality coated
materials for food and pharma segments.
Another sunshine zone
India is the land of big fat weddings.
Now the market for highly glossy wedding
album is expanding. Pointing to this growth,
Naveen observes that such escalation will
accelerate the demand for specialty papers
of different textures, weaves, embossing
and coating. He also predicts the similar
growth in the relative sub-segments like
fancy table calendars, coffee table books,
etc. “Coffee table book is one of the exportoriented
segments in the Indian printing
market,” says Naveen, adding their aim is
to accelerate these growing domains.
Sedna Business Consultants involves with
leading international paper companies from
Russia, China and others, which are globally
known for producing high grade specialty
papers. About the company’s network,
Naveen says they have tied up with some
well-known paper companies in the Indian
paper market with a focus to serve their
end users at the utmost satisfactory level.
Moreover, Sedna always wishes to directly
consult with their end users.
For newspaper printing
For the Indian printed newspapers market
Naveen has a very positive feeling. He
says, “Last year, India imported 1.3 million
tonnes of newsprints and local manufacturers
also produced almost the similar volume,
which means the country’s newspaper
printing market annually consumes 2.6
million tonnes of newsprints and it’s not
a bad sign.” He further explains that India
is one of the few countries in the world
where printed newspapers keep growing.
Current growth perceiving in the Indian
newspaper industry is predominantly in the
regional arenas. Spotting this fact, Naveen
estimates that more than half of the country’s
population live in villages or rural areas
and newspaper houses are now rapidly
attempting to penetrate into this unexplored
geography, which will subsequently shoot
up the newsprint demand.
Stora Enso (India), while Naveen was
leading it, supplied newsprints to some
of the leading national dailies like
The Hindu, The Times of India, Mathrubhumi,
among others. And today, Sedna Business
Consultants is subsequently associating
with some of the leading newspapers
of the country.
Keeping its core consultancy service in
the forefront, Sedna Business Consultants
looks forward to expanding its team as
well as product range and service in the
coming years.
Winners of Asian Digital Media Awards
to compete for World Awards Collaboratively
presented
Collaboratively presented by WAN-IFRA
and Google, Asian Digital Media
Awards 2015 will recognise newspaper
publishers which have adopted digital media
and mobile strategies as part of their total
product offering to meet the major changes
in how people
consume news
and information
today. This year,
what it makes the
competition more exciting and challenging
than ever is the addition of two brand new
categories—Best Lifestyle Website and Best
Lifestyle Mobile Services.
Top winners of the Asian Digital Media Awards
2015 will automatically be selected to compete
for WAN-IFRA’s World Digital Media Awards,
which will be presented at the World Publishing
Expo on October 06 at Hamburg, Germany.
The jury of Asian Digital Media Awards
will comprise a panel of media professionals
from around the world. Many judges are past
winners of WAN-IFRA's European Digital
Media Awards; but in the last year’s jury
were included judges from Globe & Mail,
Evening Standard, Havas, Gulf News, Schibsted,
La Presse and more.
This year, with two new additional categories,
Asian Digital Media Awards are categorised
under: Web news site, Lifestyle website,
Digital Advertising, Use of online video, Data
visualisation, News mobile service, Lifestyle
mobile service, Tablet publishing, New product
and Reader management. The top entries in
the awards will be compiled in the annual
research report titled Best Practice in Digital
Media of WAN-IFRA.
ARETS Graphics changes
name to TOYO Ink ARETS
A renowned flag bearer of radiation curing
technology in India, ARETS Graphics
India Pvt Ltd has changed its name
to TOYO INK ARETS INDIA PVT LTD.
Today, ARETS has acquired a commendable
position in the printing
industry with its stateof-
the-art manufacturing
and research facility of UV and EB curable
inks and coatings in Belgium. Following the
acquisition of the company and its subsidiaries
by TOYO Ink Group in 2013, ARETS Graphics
NV had already announced the change of its
name to TOYO INK ARETS from January 01,
2015. But it took some time for the company
to give its Indian subsidiary the new name
as several proceedings of NOCs and ROC
approval were underwent to clear all clouds
of confusion with TOYO Ink India, which is
an already existing company in the country.
After the change of name, Prashant Atre
continues to be the managing director of
TOYO INK ARETS INDIA PVT LTD. He
firmly believes that customers in India will
be benefited with TOYO Ink Group’s rich
knowledge and innovations in UV and EB
chemistry. Indian team of TOYO Ink ARETS
realises the importance of this new stance
and outlook of the company. And the team is
now fully charged up to serve the customers
with greater enthusiasm.
