Poddar Global
fulfills newsprint need for almost
every single Indian newspaper house
Serving the industry through its state-of-the-art
newsprint
supply chain facilities nationwide
An accurate answer to the call for timely delivery
of the finest newsprint from a newspaper printing
house, anywhere or anytime, could only get from
Poddar Global—a big old newsprint importer
with a chain of supply facilities in strategic locations covering the entire length and
breadth of the country. Of the six warehouse facilities, except the one at its headoffice
in Delhi, five are in the port cities of Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Cochin
and Visakhapatnam, situated so strategically to receive direct overseas shipments.
Jyaneswar Laishram from All About Newspapers visited the Kolkata facility, which
is designed to meet the needs of newspaper houses in the Eastern part of India.
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Having been into the newsprint
distribution business for over last 28
years, Poddar Global is considerably
the sole supplier of globally acclaimed
newsprint brands to almost every newspaper
printing house in India. Inception of its
Kolkata warehouse facility in 2010 has
strengthened the company’s undivided
presence in supplying newsprint around the
country’s eastern newspaper market. “Our
facility in Kolkata has the storage capacity
of 30,000 metric tonnes of newsprint; and
as of now, around 18,000 metric tonnes
are procured as one-time-stock,” proclaims
Sanjay Goenka, manager, Poddar Global
Limited (Kolkata).
Inside the Kolkata warehouse facility
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With a storage area of 80,000 sq ft built
on a stretch of eight acre land, Kolkata
facility is comparatively a bit smaller in
size to that of Chennai and Mumbai, but
bigger than the remaining ones in Delhi,
Cochin and Vishakhapatnam. Roof height
or ceiling of the Kolkata warehouse is
designed in a way to house nine newsprint
stacks or rolls mounting over one another
vertically. The facility is equipped with
sophisticated slitting machine to trim the
newsprint and forklift machines are used to
load and unload the newsprint rolls steadily
at ease. Collectively in all the six facilities,
150 well-trained young professionals are
engaged in the overall activities of Poddar
Global and nearly 40 of them are in the
Kolkata facility.
Advantage end users
Sanjay Goenka posing along stockpile of newsprint stacks
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On the flawless shipment and transportation
process, Sanjay Goenka explains that the
company’s fully imported consignments are
first harboured at the respective ports and
contracted clearing agents, on behalf of
Poddar Global, transport the materials using
40 ft long trailers to their warehouses. An
unmatched advantage that Poddar Global
provides its customers is the Accredited
Client Program (ACP), which is a special
status allotted to the company by the Ministry
of Finance, Government of India, to allow
free movement of the containers directly
from the ports to the ‘custom bonded areas’
in the respective warehouses.
Custom bonded area, according to Sanjay
Goenka, is a specially designated zone in the
warehouse, designed to provide customers an
added storage advantage. Citing an example,
he explains, “Let’s say, a newspaper printing
house has booked a consignment of 500
metric tonne of newsprint, but they are
not yet ready to transport it to their own
facility; during this period, they can use the
custom bonded area at our warehouse to
store the consignment temporarily. In this
case, though the consignment is kept with
us it totally belongs to the customer.” An
ACP customer, unlike the normal, can even
keep consignments in the ports without any
subsequent threat of huge port demurrage
and detention charges. This is how Poddar
Global dedicatedly serves the industry with
advantageous plans and policies to the sheer
benefit of their customers or end users.
Big brand products
Sanjay Goenka and Sanjay Sanghvi
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A pile of newsprint rolls from a number
of globally recognised paper mills is what
all Poddar Global takes into their product
portfolio. Doing a quick math on figure tips,
Sanjay Sanghvi, deputy general manager,
Poddar Global Limited (Kolkata) counts
on some of the major newsprint brands
they import from different countries, which
are currently stockpiled in the Kolkata
warehouse, such as Catalyst Marathon
(Canada), MNI (Malaysia), Volga (Russia),
Holmen (Sweden), Jeonju (South Korea),
Norske Skog (Australia) and UPM Schwedt
(Germany). When enquired to specify the
most premium ones among the brands,
Sanjay smiles to say, “All are premium
as these are imported and world class.”
But he further details that the variations
in demands among the products or brands
occur simply as per the requirement of the
newspaper houses or end users, depending
on price sometimes.
In context of the newsprint of varied
characteristics available in the warehouse,
Sanjay Sanghvi also shares his expert notion
saying that the brands are not chosen by
Poddar Global but their customers—the
newspaper printers dotted in far and near
corners of the country. Standard newsprint
(SNP) now available in stock at the
Kolkata facility are of between 42-45 gsm,
whereas the Hi-Brite range is varied from
48 to 52 gsm.
All around east
Ever since the opening of the Kolkata
warehouse facility, Poddar Global has
been a name known to every small and
big newspaper house around the eastern
part of the country. “We nominally charge
our customers when it comes to logistic,”
says Sanjay Goenka, adding, “Our trucks
are arranged to access to the remotest
corner of the eastern region, which include
North-East states.”Right from Bhubaneswar
(Odisha), Guwahati (Assam) upto Imphal
(Manipur), the whole eastern part of the
country is in complete grip of Poddar
Global, satisfying the customers’ needs to
the upmost gratifying level.
Apart from the leading national dailies
like Dainik Bhaskar, Punjab Kesari, Amar
Ujala, Prabhat Khabar, The Indian Express,
Hindustan Times, Dainik Hindustan, just
name a newspaper, there will be high
chance of it being included in the client
list of Poddar Global. Hueiyen Lanpao,
one of the leading vernacular dailies
published from Imphal in Manipur, uses
imported newsprint from Poddar Global,
which caters to this customer based in the
easternmost region of the country through
its Guwahati unit. Eastern Media Limited,
Bhubaneswar-based leading media house
of Odisha, is yet another important client
of Poddar Global in the east. This news
media house is known for its widely read
regional daily Sambad.
Accumulated chunk of clients of Poddar
Global are also easily accessible in the
city of Guwahati, a commercial hub of
North-East India. Dainik Jugasankha is
one of the largest circulated dailies in the
Eastern region which is of course printed
on imported newsprint from Poddar Global.
“We distribute all around the eastern region
through trucks capable to ferry 16 metric
tonnes of newsprint to the remotest corner
of the region,” says Sanjay Goenka.
Bright future moves
Joining the debate on the future of news
media, Sanjay Goenka feels the same what
others do as there is a visible onslaught of
online media upon the printed newspapers.
But he optimistically observes, “After
all, there is something which is why the
current printed newspaper market in India is
gaining, unlike many developed countries.”
Vernacular newspapers in tier II and tier
III cities keep expanding; literacy rate
among rural populations gets growing; all
these factors, Sanjay Goenka says, might
trigger the printed newspaper industry at
least to some extended life span. He adds
that the next one decade or so will still
be healthy survival period for the printed
newspapers in India, perhaps the country
would be emerged to be one of the most
prominent consumption hubs of newsprint
in the world during this period, before
attaining what it happens today to many
newspaper houses and paper mills in the
developed countries.
Moreover, with the provisions of increasing
financial budgets by the governments
at state and central levels, there are
implementations of supplying free textbooks
to underprivileged children with ongoing
RTE Act and Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan, which
may accelerate demand for writing papers
and on the other side it may help domestic
newsprint mills keep on shifting to writing
papers to get higher profit in the long run.
All in all, Poddar Global is now switching
to a new expansion mode; this year, the
Kolkata facility is going to expand from
the existing size of 80,000 sq ft to 1,12,000
sq ft, which Sanjay Goenka terms as
second phase of expansion that will
take place with all the six supply chain
facilities in proportionate to their respective
existing sizes.
Know the leaders
Sunil Poddar
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Founder of Poddar Global Limited, late Ram Karan
Poddar, was an eminent journalist for more than 45
years. He was the one who could sense the exquisiteness
of newspapers; his love for the industry eventually
instilled him to establish this chain of nationwide supply
facilities catering the finest range of newsprint imported
from the most renowned paper mills around the globe.
Current managing director of the company, Sunil Poddar, is young and
dynamic; he is considered to be the guiding light of Poddar Global. With
28 years of experience in the industry, his foresight approach always
lends a positive push and growth to the company—more importantly he
is committed to be ‘partner in progress’ concept all the time.
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