Uflex Limited founder, chairman and managing director Mr Ashok Chaturvedi has been honoured with The Economic Times Polymers Lifetime Achievement Award 2018.
Mr Chaturvedi is a first-generation entrepreneur and founder of the Uflex Group. Under his dynamic leadership the group has evolved to become India’s largest fully integrated multinational flexible packaging materials and solution company, offering packaging films (BOPP, BOPET, CPP, metallised and other Speciality Films); packaging products such as laminates (roll form), pre-formed pouches, flexi-tubes, big bags; packaging and converting machines; inks, adhesives, coatings and polyols; elastomers and sleeves, Rotogravure printing cylinders; flexo-polymer plates and anti-counterfeiting and brand protection solutions that prevent lookalikes from eroding the brand equity of clients.
Notably, Mr Ashok Chaturvedi is credited for the introduction of small sachets or unit packs for mouth fresheners, candies, tomato ketchup, shampoos to make them affordable and well within the reach of the common man back in the eighties. This was ‘THE BIG SPARK’ that ignited and revolutionized the way FMCG products were packaged and sold in India and is termed as the ‘WATERSHED MOMENT’ in the Indian flexible packaging industry.
Under the aegis of Mr Chaturvedi, Uflex today has state-of-the-art flexible packaging material manufacturing facilities at multiple locations in India with installed capacity of around 100,000 TPA and packaging film manufacturing facilities at strategic locations across the world with cumulative installed capacity in excess of 337,000 TPA at India, UAE, Poland, Egypt, Mexico and US with the products enjoying a formidable market presence in over 140 countries worldwide.
What started as a tiny venture in 1985 is today a flourishing Indian Multinational Conglomerate with turnover in excess of $1bn. Mr Ashok Chaturvedi is fondly revered as the ‘Father of the flexible packaging industry in India’.
After having ruled the roost in the Indian packaging industry for over three decades and innovatively offering end-to-end flexible packaging solutions for packing solids, semi solids, pastes, gels, viscous fluids, powders and granular materials, Uflex under the able leadership of Mr Ashok Chaturvedi has setup first of its kind state-of-the-art aseptic liquid packaging material manufacturing plant at Sanand in Gujarat for products such as milk, dairy derivatives, juices, other non-aerated energy drinks and distilled beverages. The annual production capacity of this plant is seven billion packs. The Sanand Project re-affirms Company’s commitment towards government’s Make in India, initiative.
With this, Uflex has completed its entire product bouquet that now spans across end-to-end flexible packaging solutions for solids, semi solids, non-aerated liquids, pastes, gels, viscous fluids, powders and granular materials. This is a rare feat in its own right giving a sense of completion to the product portfolio of the flexible packaging behemoth.
No other company in India has as much capacity and capability of offering such a wide gamut of flexible packaging solutions. Uflex can process any quantum of order and ensure Just in Time deliveries anywhere in the world.
Mr Chaturvedi has always maintained that his shop floor and R&D departments across business verticals namely Films; Packaging Products; Engineering; Chemicals; Holography and Cylinders serve as laboratories for the clients globally where through a collaborative approach Uflex engineers bespoke flexible packaging solutions. No two solutions that Uflex offers for its clients are likely to be the same. Such is the level of customisation. Owing to Mr Chaturvedi’s foresightedness, Uflex has been successfully reaping the first mover advantage by maintaining quick speed to market reach in the best interest of its global clientele.
Retaining the tag of India’s largest fully integrated flexible packaging materials and Solution Company Uflex never loses focus on sustainability. In fact innovation and sustainability at Uflex go hand in hand keeping the ‘GREEN’ Promise by using renewable resources; maximising post-consumer re-cyclate usage; Reducing all-production waste; Reusing all-production waste; using all non-recyclable waste to produce energy; progressively optimising energy consumption; optimally down-gauging the substrates and lightweighting the packaging structures.
The Economic Times Polymers Lifetime Achievement Award 2018 was given away at a formal ceremony held in Mumbai last evening. The who’s who from the Indian plastics, polymers and packaging industry had congregated for the award ceremony.
Making a strong pitch for the plastics, polymers and packaging industry, Mr Ashok Chaturvedi in his acceptance speech said: “Plastics in all forms whether single layered; multi-layered or mixed are recyclable/ reprocessable and can be put to viable end-of-life use. We at our manufacturing plants have been successfully demonstrating how polymeric/ packaging waste can be efficiently reprocessed. Research at International scale has proven beyond reasonable doubt that flexible packaging requires much less energy than its rigid counterpart like metals, glass etc. throughout all the three critical phases of its lifecycle i.e. manufacturing, transportation and disposal.
“Our commitment and efforts towards sustainable business processes and products date back to several decades much before carbon footprint neutralization and sustainability became global concerns. In 1995 at Recycle’95 – Davos Global Forum, Uflex was conferred with the Best Paper Award as a testament to its unrelenting work towards recycling and packaging sustainability.
Today as I hold this prestigious archer, I am truly humbled and thank the Times Group for this honour.”