
Italy’s Rossini talked about and promoted its rubber rollers, sleeves and mandrels for flexography and gravure presses at Plastindia 2015. Rossini’s managing director, Paolo Mesturini, who is based in China, was present at the company stand along with KV Hebbar and Ashvin Hebbar of Scanvik Packaging, which represents Rossini in India.
In a major investment move, the Italian company inaugurated its 8,000 square metres plant in Chakan, Pune, in September 2014. A new entity, Rossini India Printing Rollers has been established. “We have a large customer base in India and the Rossini family always desired to have a close connection with the Indian market. We are held in high regard by Indian machine manufacturers and they also pushed us to set up a plant in India. The location of the plant is perfect,” according to Mesturini.
Rossini supplies sleeves and rollers to all the major OEMs for gravure and flexography presses such as the Bobst Group, Cerutti, Comexi, Uteco, KYMC among others. Also, Indian manufacturers of gravure and flexo presses including Kohli Industries, Expert Industries, Pelican Rotoflex, Uflex, and Raulimex use Rossini sleeves and rollers on their presses. “The quality of Indian machine manufacturers has gone up tremendously in the last decade or so and they needed quality sleeves and rollers locally. Hepointed out that there are very few countries that have shown such fast growth in quality and some manufacturers are now top-of-the-line,” said Mesturini. When asked about the newly inaugurated plant in Pune, KV Hebbar said that it will cut down delivery time substantially and reduce costs.
Hebbar explained that lot of small convertors are not well-versed with import procedures and find the process cumbersome and local availability of Rossini rollers and sleeves would be of great help to them. “The new plant would cater mainly to Indian customers, and the possibility of serving the export market would also be probed going forward. Although our current focus is on the Indian market but using the new plant for export would also be looked at later,”Hebbar added.