IPAMA BULLETIN PRINTPACK INDIA 2019
R&D IS KEY TO MAKE IN INDIA
Alok
Technology
Incubation
Centre for
Masterbatches
Vikram Bhadauria, director of ALOK Masterbatches
NARESH KHANNA
W
e visited the Alok Technology
Incubation Centre in South
Delhi’s Okhla Industrial
Area,Alok Masterbatches, a Rs. 400
crore (US$ 60 million) company with
six masterbatch manufacturing plants
including five in India and one in Latin
America. The newest plant in Silvassa
has a capacity of manufacturing 5,000
tons a month. ATIC is the technology
platform that it established about five
years ago to foster a much-needed
R&D culture in order to come up with
technology solutions for its customers.
At ATIC, Vikram Bhadauria,
who leads the technology team of the
company as a whole, introduced us to
vice president of technology Dr Nitin
Joshi and showed us around the center
consisting of a research lab, a lab with
advance measuring instruments,
a mixing lab or kitchen for making
experimental masterbatches, and
finally a small extrusion blown film
machine for producing prototype films
and structures. Bhadauria says, “We
set up this industry 25 years ago,
and we set up ATIC 5 years ago with
the core philosophy of adding good to
everything whether it is relationships
or plastics. Earlier we built R&D
teams that after six months used
to get coopted by production. We
wanted to separate the R&D and do
something scientific and new without
any financial targets—to work on
8 | SEP-OCT 2018 | SUPPORTED BY IPP & PSA
something new to build new products
and new product technologies, not only
masterbatches, but to really think of
something new.
“ATIC is an open technology
platform for anyone to come and use it
for help in finding solutions for their
plastics applications—anything and
everything for current and future
needs. After we started with a fresh
batch of engineers straight off the
campus, customers slowly came to us
for a variety of reasons – perhaps they
had seen something in Europe or the
US and asked if it could be produced
here. Global suppliers came to us
looking for Indian partners.”
ATIC is a success story for Make
in India manufacturing that has
won awards for its innovative R&D
solutions. Bhadauria explains, “In
India we see that there is shortage of
durable products and while plastics
offer many solutions, keeping our
conditions in mind we have to make
sure these are safe, sustainable and
also affordable.” He explains that the
masterbatches (or additives) developed
by ATIC are used in several key areas
of plastic management such as UV
and IR radiation, electromagnetic
interference shielding, density
modification process improvement
and heat management. “Thus you can
use plastic to make tent material for
the Indian army which works in cold
conditions, in a snowy environment
and just by flipping it over, in hot
and desert conditions. This is done
just by heat management. There is
electrical management of plastics also,
such as anti-static, which is useful for
defense applications such as explosives
and EMI shielding (electromagnetic
interference shielding) for all kinds of
electronic products and instruments.
With density management of plastics
we can make them lighter and with
thermal management of plastics, we
can have plastics conducting heat.”
Bhadauria, like several leading
Indian plastic industry professionals,
was educated at one of the finest
chemical and plastic engineering
schools in the world, at the University
of Massachusetts at Lowell, which
is also partnering the PlastIndia
Foundation in building its Plastics
University in Vapi, Gujarat. He gives
examples of some the notable R&D
successes of the company, “In 2003,
a farmer contacted us who had used
some films in Israel and he wanted
help in producing some special mulch
films for agriculture for which he
foresaw a big market in India. Apart
from seeking our center’s help, he
used various consultants and testing
facilities including Central Institute of
Plastic Engineering (CIPET) and even
brought some ingredients from Europe.
Ultimately, we helped him produce a
film that worked as well, if not better,
than the Israeli film. In 2015, this
agricultural film won us the innovation
award. Now from one machine he
has four machines to produce these
films – from being a farmer he has