Automation and technology play a considerable role in our industry

Nitesh Sharma, Managing Director, Shri Maa Group, gives us a lowdown on the process of making bags for cement, the technology involved in the process, efforts towards sustainability and the important role packaging plays in cement storage and transportation.

Tell us about the variety of bags manufactured by your organisation to cater to the cement industry?
We manufacture all kinds of bags used suitable for packaging cement in India and globally. Our product range is as listed below:

• PP stitched valve bags
• Laminated PP stitched valve bags
• Laminated PP Block Bottom bags
• Laminated PP Block Bottom BOPP bags
• Laminated PP Block Bottom BOPP bags with Liner
• FIBC BULK bags

What is the material and capacity of these bags manufactured by you?
The materials used by our organisation to make cement packaging are polypropylene raffia grade, polypropylene lamination grade, polypropylene multifilament yarn and high resistance corona treated ink.
These bags hold the capacity to pack up to 50 kg cement. Our production capacity allows us to manufacture 400 million bags per annum.

How do you incorporate sustainability in cement packaging manufacturing?
Yes, we do incorporate sustainability for cement packaging in our manufacturing process in the following manner:

• For all the products manufactured in our facilities, we use single family plastic raw materials, above 300 microns, which makes our product easily recyclable and reusable.
• The waste incurred during the manufacturing process, i.e., post industry wastage is recycled and used in different plastic product applications. Thus, we are a zero plastic waste company.

Tell us about the role of automation and technology in your manufacturing process?
Yes, automation and technology play a considerable role in our industry. Earlier bag stitching used to be done manually, which involved a lot of work like making valves, folding of bags and thereafter stitching, which always resulted in a lot of variation in sizes. That used to result in a lot of bags being rejected while cement packaging.
With automation, high speed bag converting machines can make bags up to 140 bags per minute with full accuracy. Due to this accuracy level, no bags get rejected for its size or dimension fault.
These new machines also allow us to work at a higher speed and improve productivity with a high output of bags, thus, meeting the industry demands timely. Automation and technology help us save cost, improve productivity and efficiency by incorporating high outputs with least amount variance.

What alternative materials are being used for packagingof cement that support the environment?
The only alternative to PP bags is paper bags, which is not at all sustainable, looking at the volume in which bags are required in the Indian cement industry. Moreover, paper bags have a much higher carbon footprint as compared to PP bags. The cost of paper bags is also higher as compared to PP bags. Cement makers are hardly using paper bags for packaging of cement for these reasons and PP bags are the only ones that are used.

Cement bags are exposed to harsh environments. How equipped is your product to prevent cement wastage?
Bags made of polypropylene can easily sustain harsh environments. Usually, we do not need to add any additives to retain the properties of the bags as in a normal case, cement is consumed within one to two months after it is produced and packed. But if there is a need to have longevity, we can add certain additives to the master batch to retain the properties of the bag. These additives allow the bags to sustain harsh conditions and environments, if exposed, for up to a year.

What are the key challenges in providing packaging material for cement?
We manufacture and supply a large volume of bags to the cement industry. Each batch of the bag that goes out to the customer requires and goes through internal quality checks before it is supplied for the filling and packaging of cement.
Even though we have incorporated automation in our systems, a lot of manpower is required to make bags for the cement industry making our job labour intensive. The challenge is to acquire and retain this high skilled labour in large numbers in our industry.

Tell us about some innovations in packaging in the pipeline that the cement industry can look forward to.
There have been a lot of innovations going on in cement bags in the last couple of years. We are working on making these bags more sustainable in terms of environmental issues. We were the first to develop high quality low weight bags in India and with our technology partner ExxonMobil we launched these bags with Nuvoco Vista Corp Ltd., who are one of the leading manufacturers of cement. Nuvoco supported us in launching these bags and thus, we could reduce the bag weight by almost 20 per cent with better quality results.
These bags have been available in the market for the last couple of years and are performing very well. By reducing the weight of the bags, we could achieve the following:

• Reduce the cost of the bags
• Use less plastics
• With a similar quantity of raw materials, we can make 20 per cent more bags
• These bags are made with such additives that it can sustain an even much harsher environment and for a longer period.
• After recycling, quality of the RP granules is much better than the existing high weight bags
• Further, we are working on some technologies where we can wash, clean and de-ink the bags post consumer use and recycle them to very high standard reprocessed granules, which can again be used up to a considerable percentage in manufacturing of the bags. This will reduce waste to a large extent and help us reduce costs as well, thus, benefiting the environment and the industry.

-Kanika Mathur