As explained by Sanjay Desai, Director, True Colors, the productivity of printers has vastly improved due to amazing technological advancements that result in better quality and cost savings
“The demand for digital and sublimation textile printers is expanding with each passing year due to increase in productivity of the printers. In earlier times, printers had just two print-heads, which has now increased to 72 and this has helped enhance the productivity of printers,” says Sanjay Desai, Director of Surat-based True Colors. True Colors began its journey in 2011 by importing economically priced sublimation printers from China under the True Colors brand and at the same time also started a digital printing facility.
Later, it started representing Atexco, a Chinese company, which supplies high-speed sublimation printers for West and North India. The company is also distributor of digital textile printers from Konica Minolta in India. True Colors has 38 sublimation as well as digital printers along with heat transfer machines in their own printing facility and prints around 700,000-800,000 metres per month. They have recently set up a sublimation paper manufacturing unit and also supply printing inks.
Recently, Atexco launched an eight print-head printer named Model X, which offers productivity of 9,000 sq. metres per day. This has resulted in lower space utilisation and cost savings in labour and electricity for the customer. Model X also can mount jumbo paper rolls, resulting in saving of paper. In earlier models, papers rolls of only 200 metres could be used, which resulted in wastage of 10-15% of paper after every print run. Using jumbo rolls has reduced the wastage to just 2-3%. Atexco also has recently launched a position printer named VEGA 3180, which has an inbuilt camera. This allows printing at any particular location or position of the fabric.
Konica Minolta also has in its portfolio the Nassenger series of printers named PRO 120, Nessanger 8 and Nessanger 10. The best feature of the Nassenger PRO 8 and 10 is the print masking function, which has eliminated the challenge of bending while printing. The PRO 8 offers production of 4,000 sq. metres per day, while the PRO 10 offers production of 9,000 sq. metres per day. The company has sales offices in Delhi, Noida, Ludhiana, Amritsar and Mumbai and its sales and service engineers are stationed at each of these offices.
In addition, it also has resident engineers stationed at Panipat, Kolkata and Tirupur. In total they have 28 engineers across India. According to Sanjay Desai, they are trying hard to match the cost of printing on sublimation printers vis-a-vis rotary or flatbed textile printers. Currently, for 28 colour prints the cost of printing on Model X from Atexco is between Rs. 25-30 per metre as against Rs. 22 per metre on conventional printers. He also opines that the day they are able to offer sublimation printers at the same printing costs, rotary or flatbed printers could become history.
In their own digital printing factory, where they print on job-work basis, True Colors was charging Rs. 150 per metre in 2011, which is now down to Rs. 35-40 per metre for similar prints and fabric material. “Based on fashion trends, fabric manufacturers design the fabrics every season. Earlier, they would need to stock these printed fabrics in huge quantities, which necessarily would not get sold out at the end of the season and so would be offered at discounts. Now, depending on orders from customers, they get the fabric printed on sublimation printers. This has helped them keep their margins intact,” he points out.