Successful results following the PAMEX trade fair and Print Summit
Koenig & Bauer impresses India’s leading packaging manufacturers with innovations and efficiency improvements.
- PAMEX 2026 track record: Leading companies such as Canpac Trends and Akar Limited repeatedly invest in Rapida technology
- Measurable efficiency increase: Rapida 105 provides Miracle Group with a 45 percent increase in capacity while reducing waste.
- Digital innovation: The “protected at print” initiative enables comprehensive digital product protection and opens up new business opportunities for printing companies.
India’s packaging printers operate in a challenging market: they must meet rapidly increasing demand while simultaneously adhering to the highest brand standards. At the PAMEX 2026 trade fair in Mumbai, Koenig & Bauer, together with its long-standing and highly successful sales and service partner on the Indian subcontinent, Indo Polygraph Machinery, demonstrated how technology can overcome these challenges. The success of the trade fair week confirms the validity of their joint strategy as a “Partner for Profitable Growth”: leading Indian packaging manufacturers are investing, sometimes repeatedly, in high-performance technology from Koenig & Bauer to secure their competitiveness.
Investments secure capacity and quality
The focus of discussions with customers and prospective clients at the trade fair was on answering the question of how printing companies can expand their capacity while ensuring the increased quality requirements.
Canpac Trends, a leading provider of packaging solutions in India, made a clear statement at PAMEX by investing in a Rapida 106 with seven printing units and a coating unit. The press will serve as the technological centerpiece of its new packaging plant in Indore. For Karan Pursnani, Director at Canpac, the decision wasn’t solely based on printing performance, but also on reproducibility for repeat orders and high-volume print runs: Reproducibility and brand-compliant results are key factors in the new site’s strategy. With this purchase, Canpac now operates eight Rapida presses and has exclusively partnered with Koenig & Bauer for this greenfield project.
Akar Limited (Silvassa) also used the trade fair to modernize its sheetfed offset printing fleet. The company signed an order for a new Rapida 105. With five Koenig & Bauer presses now in its fleet, Akar aims to continue its growth in the finished packaging sector through increased productivity and quality.
Real results, not just promises.
Current market data demonstrates that the technology has a direct impact on customers’ profit and loss statements (P&L). For example, Miracle Group recorded a 45 percent increase in production capacity after installing a Rapida 105 in 2025. At the same time, the intelligent automation of the system led to a significant reduction in waste. These figures underscore Koenig & Bauer’s commitment not only to supplying machines, but also to implementing genuine growth drivers.
Koenig & Bauer’s technological market leadership is currently being confirmed by further milestones: With the installation of the first MetalStar 4, Koenig & Bauer is bringing the most advanced metal printing press to the Indian market. Back in 2025, the installation of the first RotaJET, the region’s most productive digital high-tech rotary press, set new standards.
From packaging printer to digital security service provider
In addition to hardware efficiency, Koenig & Bauer addressed another pressing problem for brand manufacturers at the Print Summit 2026: product piracy. Sascha Fischer, CEO of Koenig & Bauer (ES), presented a paradigm shift in his presentation “protected at print”.
A key technology of this initiative is varnish protect ‘aegis’. Based on Stegano technology, hidden information, such as codes, is integrated directly into the varnish layer. The major advantage for the production process: no changes to the design or prepress workflow are necessary, and a single varnish plate can be used for different customers and orders, which massively increases efficiency. Authenticity is easily verified via a smartphone app (‘a verification app – ava’).
This opens up a new business model for printers: they no longer just sell printed cardboard, but digital product protection as a premium service. The technology creates a ‘ghost loop’ invisible to the human eye, making counterfeiting more difficult and enabling brand manufacturers to track their products in real time.
Aditya Surana, Managing Director of Indo Polygraph Machinery, summarizes: “Our partnership, which began in 1994 with the first Rapida, has developed into THE success story for the entire Indian market. From over 1,000 Rapida printing units to digital innovations, we are setting new standards together.”
