Jagannath M Wagle, managing director of Ajman-based Sigma Middle East Labels Industries LLC tells Packaging MEA about his company’s strategy and recent investments in production capacity.
How and when did Sigma begin as a labelling company?
I started Sigma in January 2010. Before I was working in a company in Ajman as sales manager. I wanted to grow in the field of product labels so took an opportunity to make a small investment with a three-colour Mark Andy press and slowly and gradually entered the line of interest.
As a specialist in labels and labelling printing and converting, what’s your take on the outlook for the labels market within the UAE and also in the GCC and the rest of MEA?
There is a tremendous growth and development of UAE over a period of 10 years, so the volume of market has grown.
There are too many players in this market but every player has his market share. We are now concentrating in the UAE, Oman, and African markets but we are looking at increasing our capacity will start to expand to other countries.
With so many players entering into labels and labelling these days, is there a market for this sector within the UAE?
Yes, there is a good market in the UAE. Every product requires labels. I would surely like to discuss how the market is becoming competitive but every company has its own market share.
You have recently invested in a Gidue narrow-web label press. Please brief us about this investment. Why did you invest in a label press and why Gidue?
We have recently invested in this Gidue press. The main reason is that we have a good list of customers to serve and we are working in over-capacity.
We didn’t have a significant timeframe in which to expand our business. Investment was very important, or else our customers would have suffered due to delays in delivery.
We want to offer a prime service to our customers in regard to deliveries so they don’t have to look for any alternatives. As I discussed, the market has become so competitive that we have to win our customers just by service and support.
That’s what we are doing now.
Why Gidue? It’s the very latest technology – the flower concept – which can reduce our setup time and setup wastage and, due to competition, the money is only left with our production capabilities.
Smarter production along with less wastage means an incease in profit.
Also, the width of press is 370mm which will give me more advantage for productivity.
As a label printer and converter, what really sets you apart from your competition?
We are a small company with a small investment so we have small overheads compared with other so we can compete for prices – and with our latest-technology machines we can also match the quality .
Besides the Gidue narrow web press, have you invested in any other machinery or software recently?
Yes we have recently bought a Grafotronic rewinder machine and a year back we had invested in our first 8-colour machine.
What’s the value of investment you have done in the recent past in terms of machinery and facility?
We have invested around 2 million dirhams within a year.