Indian packaging company has global investment plans

DUBAI - In a move to strengthen its presence globally and consolidate its position in the domestic market, UFLEX Ltd, a leading Indian flexible packaging company, has announced its aggressive business and investment plans of more than $250 million for the next two years.

“We are setting up new units across the globe, primarily to cater to the global market. Our target is to have one billion dollar turnover by the year 2013,” Ashok Chaturvedi, chairman and managing director, UFLEX Ltd told IANS at its Dubai plant.

He did not rule out the possibility of acquiring units across the globe.

“We have tried that in the past and we are ready to explore the possibilities further across the globe. Meanwhile, we are expanding our existing capacity of production,” he said.

UFLEX has three manufacturing units in India, one each in Mexico and Dubai. It is likely to start production in a state of the art unit in Egypt in July 2009. The second phase of the Egypt units is expected to be commissioned in the third quarter of financial year 2011-12.

These units produce a wide range of plastic films and packaging products providing end-to-end solutions to clients in more than 100 countries.

At present the company has annual revenues of more than Rs.30 billion ($646 million) and is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange in India.

“The Rs.15,000 crore (325 million USD) domestic industry (of flexible packaging) is growing annually at the rate of 15-18 percent due to increase in demand for flexible packaging products, especially by the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) and food sector,” he said.

“We want to become a preferred supplier of the packaging materials not only in India but across the globe,” Chaturvedi said.

“We are expecting the share of global market to increase from 43-60 percent in our total sales in the next few years,” he added.

“In a bid to cater to the growing demand in the US, Canada and Mexico, we have decided to further expand the capacity of our Mexico plant also. This expansion will be complete by June 2011,” Chaturvedi said.

(Arun Anand can be contacted at arun.anand@ians.in)