Mitsubishi: expanding operations
for the expansive Indian market
While having long-term commitment to the Indian printing industry for ensuring optimum customer satisfaction in terms of productivity, print quality, and
after-sales service apart from maximising ROI, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Printing & Packaging Machinery Ltd (MHI-P&PM) continues to develop new products timed with the needs of newspaper and commercial printers in India and around the globe. With the recent creation of MHII-PPD, Mitsubishi is even better positioned to fully support Indian printers in day-to-day operations as well as in long-term planning.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) first began manufacturing paper converting machinery at its Mihara Machinery Works in Hiroshima Prefecture in the year 1956, and added production of printing machinery to its line-up at this plant after six years. Over the past four decades, supported by development of various innovative technologies including many that have gone on to become industry-setting standards, Mitsubishi corrugating and printing machinery continues to gain wide recognition around the globe. Ultimately, on July 1, 2010, a new milestone was achieved when MHI established Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Printing & Packaging Machinery Ltd (MHI-P&PM). This new fully owned MHI subsidiary now handles the complete line of Mitsubishi printing and corrugating machinery, integrating design, development and production with sales and after-sales service and support.
DIAMONDSPIRIT installed at Coimbatore plant
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Headquartered in Hiroshima, MHI-P&PM was setup to serve a wider range and greater number of customers through more rapid and attentive responses in the form of product solutions. For the printing industry, these solutions encompass sheet-fed, commercial web and newspaper offset presses. While the company’s extensive network of press sales agencies and distributorships around the world remains in place, MHI has established a new division within its India subsidiary (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries India [MHII], New Delhi) to broaden its support for the Indian commercial printing and packaging markets.
Mitsubishi has long recognized the importance of the Indian market, its challenges and significant growth opportunities and in 1995 set up a Liaison Office in New Delhi. In February 2005, Mitsubishi expanded its ties to India with the establishment of the wholly owned subsidiary MHII, which actively pursues business in the areas of steel structures, power plants, machine tools, injection moulding machinery, diesel engines and power systems in India. MHII also has regional offices in Mumbai and Bangalore.
Within the Indian printing industry, Mitsubishi’s prevalence and presence took a step forward in 1998 when it partnered with Chennai based Proteck Machinery Pvt Ltd as its sales and service supplier for sheet-fed and commercial web presses. In July 2009, Mitsubishi joined forces with Newstech India Pvt Ltd, Mumbai appointing it as the sales and service distributor in India for the company’s line of newspaper offset presses. With the recent creation of MHII-PPD, Mitsubishi is even better positioned to fully support Indian printers in day-to-day operations as well as in long-term planning.
With regard to printing machinery in India, new Mitsubishi press installations now total more than 100 sheet-fed presses, five commercial web presses, and seven newspaper presses. When used Mitsubishi presses are taken into account, the installation figure in India is nearly seven fold.
The current lineup of Mitsubishi newspaper offset presses includes the 90,000 cph 4 x 2 DIAMONDSTAR, the time-proven 4 x 2 DIAMONDSPACE and the 4 x 1 DIAMONDSPIRIT. Since launching the DIAMONDSTAR in 2002, Mitsubishi has delivered more than 40 presses with more than 240 tower printing units that range from one-over-one to four-over-four colour configurations. The press has been a sensational hit with Japanese publishers in meeting the high-circulation needs of the country’s many newspapers and their high-quality demands for advertising pages.
The very first DIAMONDSPIRIT press that Mitsubishi designed and manufactured was delivered to Kasturi & Sons’ plant in Hyderabad in 2005. The 80,000 cph DIAMONDSPIRIT continues to be well received in India and with 12 press lines sold to Japanese newspaper companies within the past two years alone, its popularity throughout Japan is also rapidly increasing. Most newspapers cite the plate-saving costs in opting for Mitsubishi’s 4 x 1, as well as the remarkably high printing quality with minimum start-up waste.
To boost press productivity while realizing energy savings and reducing paper waste, Mitsubishi offers the DIAMOND EYE, the DIAMOND EYE Jr and PRINTPLEX. The world’s first automatic colour matching process for newspaper colour printing, DIAMOND EYE was launched in 2007 and during the past three years Mitsubishi has installed the system at more than fifty installations. This in-line quality control system takes the guesswork out of colour matching by using scanning sensors that measure actual printing density, comparing this data to image density values based on plate-making data, and then compensating for calculated variations through ink key adjustments – all fully automated and all in real time. Recently developed DIAMOND EYE Jr, which can be readily upgraded at any time to DIAMOND EYE, serves as an in-line print quality defect detection system to detect and eject defective copies by comparing target density data based on good copy to actual print density acquired by image sensors. Developed by Mitsubishi specifically for newspaper publishers who run multiple print jobs of different run lengths, PRINTPLEX enables one press to be operated simultaneously as two independent presses. This creates more flexible production windows and maximizes press utilisation, contributing to improved production times and productivity.
