Mr. Ashok Chaturvedi, Founder, Chairman &
Managing Director of India’s largest multinational flexible packaging materials
and solution company Uflex Limited 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, Metallized and other Speciality Films); Packaging products like laminates
(roll form), pre-formed pouches, flexi-tubes, big bags; Packaging and
Converting machines; Inks, adhesives, coatings & polyols; Elastomers &
Sleeves, Rotogravure printing cylinders; Flexo-polymer plates and
Anti-counterfeiting & brand protection solutions that prevent look-alikes
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 etc. 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 & USA with the products enjoying a formidable market
presence in over 140 countries across the globe.
What started as a tiny venture in 1985 is today a
flourishing Indian Multinational Conglomerate with turnover in excess of 1
Billion USD. 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
like milk, dairy derivatives, juices, other non-aerated energy drinks and
distilled beverages. The annual production capacity of this plant is 7 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
customization. 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; Maximizing post-consumer re-cyclate usage; Reducing
all-production waste; Reusing all-production waste; Using all non-recyclable
waste to produce energy; Progressively optimizing energy consumption; Optimally
down-gauging the substrates and Light-weighting 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 life-cycle 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.”
