The company is investing in SIG’s filling machines to expand its footprint

India’s ethnic snack-food giant Haldirams Nagpur is on a growth track, opening its own manufacturing facility for long shelf-life dairy products. Setting up a massive dairy facility with over Rs 100 crore investment, the company is clearly looking to expand its footprint from its existing markets of Maharashtra, Goa, and Chhattisgarh.

SIG, a leading systems and solutions provider for aseptic carton packaging, has been chosen by Haldirams to help expand its business offerings by leveraging SIG’s pioneering filling machines for aseptic carton packs. For the first time, the company has invested in its own manufacturing setup for filling products into aseptic carton packs, and SIG is supplying them with a high-speed CFA 1224 filling machine for combiblocXSlim carton packs from SIG. SIG’s filling technology offers excellent flexibility with multiple volume offerings, making it an ideal choice for Haldirams. Furthermore, SIG’s high-speed filling machine, able to fill 24,000 carton packs an hour, provides sufficient capacity for Haldirams to expand and grow over the next few years.

Commenting on the partnership, Sushil Agarwal, director at Haldirams Nagpur, said, “SIG offered us state-of-the-art technology with full flexibility of nine-volume sizes on one filling machine, all at high speed. This gives us a lot of options to pack a variety of products in a huge number of different packaging formats and sizes. And even more, the elegant, slim carton packs are very attractive and stand out on the shelf.” 

Starting from co-packaging its products through contract manufacturers, the company now aims to launch an even wider range of ethnic dairy and non-dairy products, leveraging on its existing retail network and distribution capabilities. 

Neeraj Agarwal, marketing director at Haldirams Nagpur, commented, “Our brand Haldirams is a household name, associated with great quality and fantastic products. With SIG, we know that we will be able to extend this in a big way into the ethnic beverages category. We will be able to introduce beverages that consumers really enjoy, in the right-sized packaging that suits different consumption occasions.” 

The product offerings will include buttermilk under the name Matka Jhatka, sold in 200 millimeter combiblocXSlim carton packs, along with Aam Panna, Jal Jeera, a variety of Lassi products. There are more innovations are now in the pipeline. 

Vandana Tandan, country manager for SIG India, commented, “We are really excited about working with Haldiram’s Nagpur. Their ambition to create differentiated products has perfect synergy with SIG’s filling system, which allows maximum flexibility. We believe that with Haldirams, we will introduce some really innovative products and grow together in this exciting category of ethnic beverages.”

Haldirams is also setting up a range of widespread franchise networks in several Indian cities to offer everything from sweets and confectionaries to namkeens and juices. The flexibility that SIG provides, along with the ability of its machines to fill products with pieces and bits, like milkshakes with pieces of dry fruits or nuts, juice products with fruit bits, will help ramp up Haldirams capacities and offerings, based on the varying needs of Indian consumers.

The Covid-19 pandemic led to the country-wide lockdown on 25 March 2020. It will be two years tomorrow as I write this. What have we learned in this time? Maybe the meaning of resilience since small companies like us have had to rely on our resources and the forbearance of our employees as we have struggled to produce our trade platforms.

The print and packaging industries have been fortunate, although the commercial printing industry is still to recover. We have learned more about the digital transformation that affects commercial printing and packaging. Ultimately digital will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future.

Web analytics show that we now have readership in North America and Europe amongst the 90 countries where our five platforms reach. Our traffic which more than doubled in 2020, has at times gone up by another 50% in 2021. And advertising which had fallen to pieces in 2020 and 2021, has started its return since January 2022.

As the economy approaches real growth with unevenness and shortages a given, we are looking forward to the PrintPack India exhibition in Greater Noida. We are again appointed to produce the Show Daily on all five days of the show from 26 to 30 May 2022.

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