Seeing growth potential in India

 

Over the last 50 years, the highway industry has witnessed tremendous evolution in technology.   Both government and the private sector have worked hard to bring new practices and products to improve efficiency and safety.  Avery Dennison has been a part of this evolution by staying focused on the needs of its customers while developing products and services that enhance highway safety. The company introduced VisiFlex™, its latest innovation for high performance prismatic emergency vehicle film, and showcased the TrafficJet™ Print System at the Intertraffic show in April. Ashish Shukla, Business Director, Reflective Solutions in Asia Pacific said that the system received very good response. Carlo Kolker, Business Director for EMEA, commented, “TrafficJet takes sign making to another level by offering superior productivity over traditional methods. It’s clean, hassle free, and its results are par excellence.”

In the Asia Pacific region, the company continues to pursue more opportunities for devices that can improve roadway safety. “The opportunity is fairly large, but at the same time is dominated by a variety of non-qualified products. Our efforts are centered on educating end users and bringing qualified and standardized products to India.  After all, it directly translates to safety of human life”, said Amandeep Singh, Business Head for Reflective Solutions, S. Asia. Very recently in India, retroreflective paint has been launched and is receiving a significant amount of attention in the industry. The product can be used on nearly any surface – metal, wood, concrete, etc.

Avery Dennison sees excellent growth potential in India, and is an active safety partner in the region. Nick Tucci, Avery Dennison Vice President & General Manager of Reflective Solutions spoke at length to TrafficInfraTech.

The digital TrafficJet print system is an improved process for the production of traffic signs. What are the main advantages? How has the industry responded, particularly in India?

To begin with, digital printing is the way to go. It’s a revolution. TrafficJet is a revolutionary product and more and more customers around the world are beginning to appreciate the value of this innovation. It’s a gigantic shift from the traditional sign making processes that are time and labor intensive, and have a detrimental impact on the environment. Anybody who has worked in a sign shop can tell you how much waste is generated by the older methods of screen printing and handapplied computer cut graphics.

TrafficJet not only makes sign making much simpler and efficient, but it also enables better sign features and improves the overall quality of the sign. The system prints multi-color graphics and fine-detailed customized pictorials automatically in a single pass. TrafficJet is extremely valuable when you produce signs with different legends, and when producing signs with sequential numbering.  Importantly, traffic signs produced with this system have the same warranted durability as signs made using screen print or computer cut materials.

Customer response been tremendous. Sign makers just love the machine. Many of our customers claim that TrafficJet has made their lives easy, and have found this technology gives them a competitive edge.

In India, we have a lot of interest in our print solution and our sheeting. We don’t just sell printers, but we provide complete operator training and ongoing support, giving our customers the convenience of a single point of contact.  I am positive TrafficJet in a country like India offers sign converters and end users significant value.

The Company is known for its innovations; its reflective solutions range from OmniCube™ and other Omni-directional reflective sheetings for traffic safety, and now TrafficJet. What is coming next?

Avery Dennison just completed its 80th year of operation. We have a history of continuous innovations in products and technologies.  We have also launched a new prismatic film for emergency vehicles, called VisiFlex. This world-class product was created after input from the end users and converters. It is very flexible and highly reflective and retains the same Omni-directional property of our traffic sign sheetings. It’s available in a wide range of colors including fluorescent colors for easy day time detection.  And then we have a variety of road devices offered in India and other Asia Pacific countries.  Our mission is clear – we go above and beyond to help you make the world a safer place, and this is demonstrated in our solutions approach in the industry.

Highway safety is a big challenge – and that includes safety during construction in work zones roads, and heavy truck and fleet visibility. How do you see these factors impacting the market for reflective tapes?  With increased capacity building on the road front, do you see the India market too is growing?

Road safety is a huge challenge and that’s the prime reason for focused attention. Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes around the world each year – that’s an average of 3,287 deaths each day. And crashes also injure or disable more than 20 million people each year.  All of our reflective products can help improve highway safety by enabling better communication.  And at night when other visual roadway clues are missing, properly placed reflective markers, delineators and signs provide that communication to the roadway user.  Better communication, and improved visibility, all contribute towards higher safety.  And importantly, bright conspicuity markings on vehicles help them be seen and recognized – this also improves safety.

Though the infrastructure industry in India has been soft for the past few years, we are winning and growing our business. We remain optimistic as we see the pace of recovery of stalled projects increasing and new ones are on the horizon. Honestly, we are expecting something big. We encourage the government to prioritize investments in road infrastructure improvements.