Started in 1975, Adler Paper is a fourth generation company that sells waste paper to paper mills across India. The company sells both normal and specialty grades of paper, Hrishikesh Vohra, CEO at Adler told Packaging South Asia at the PaperEx exhibition held from 6 – 9 December in Greater Noida.
At any given point of time, the company has about 70 to 90 different kinds of waste paper that it supplies to paper mills across the country, Vohra said, adding the recycling programs in India need to improve as the landfills are full and there is no collection system in place.
“India needs to get a collection system in place at the earliest to help recycling, segregating and sorting. The government definitely needs to have a better initiative for recycling of paper domestically instead of just sending stuff that can be recycled to the landfills,” he said.
The company supplies waste paper to customers across India, including Dev Priya Paper in Meerut in North India, Pudumjee Paper Products in Nhava Sheva in Maharashtra, Shree Ajit Pulp and Paper in Vapi in Maharashtra, South India Paper Mills in Tuticorin (Now Toothukudi) in Tamil Nadu, Ramadas Paper in Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, and Krishna Tissues in Haldia in West Bengal.
About the paper industry in India, he said, “The Indian paper industry is very fragmented and I feel there are a lot of things that need a lot of improvement. Even though it’s fragmented, it is going be booming for the next 10 years. All the official and unofficial statistics that I have been studying point to a very big future for the Indian paper industry for the next 10 to 20 years.”
Many Indian paper mills are using paper grades that cannot be recycled in the Europe, UK, and the US, whether its Tetrapacks, foil grades or poly grades, he said. Paper mills, however, are developing techniques, ways and means to use these difficult grades that cannot be reprocessed, he explained.
“It has been a great PaperEx and we are looking forward to the next year,” he concluded.