Pioneer Polyleathers Ltd. is India’s leading integrated manufacturers of flex banner, PVC foam sheet and self-adhesive vinyl. The company, which has been manufacturing these products since 2008, has recently doubled its capacity. Its state-of-the-art facility is spread across 15 acres of land and houses multiple production lines with monthly capacity to produce 600 containers of flex banner and 50 containers of vinyl. In order to know more about Pioneer’s strength and its market presence, we at Sign & POP World met Purnendu Kashyap, Vice President (Sales & Marketing), who is very much confident that flex is here to stay. The edited excerpts are here to follow:
How do you see the state of flex in the Indian signage industry?
The year Pioneer Polyleathers Limited started manufacturing flex in India; the market has been on the surge as never before. The number of flex manufacturers is continuously increasing, which is nothing but the reflection of a growing market. Further, with a variety of options depending upon strengths and thicknesses, flex is available at different price-points. Overall, being pocket-friendly to the most of below-the-average vendors/start-ups, flex has been gaining its attention as the common-man’s & corporate’s media for promotional purposes.
How has it been competing with fabric as media?
As far as competing with fabric is concerned, few solution providers have promoted it in the name of Green. But, it is also a fact that fabric lacks on many fronts when it comes to competing with flex. In short, fabric doesn’t have the potentials, flex is blessed with. As I said, flex is actually the common man media, which small vendors/manufacturers, who can’t afford news paper or TV, can easily opt for the purpose of promoting their respective brands.
What do you mean by potentials? Can you please elaborate it?
There are three major points, where flex has an edge over fabric. First, fabric for signage purposes is too costly when compared with flex. This high price is actually deterrent to its growth keeping in view the extreme level of price-sensitivity in our market. Second, the width of flex is 10 feet, which the fabric is yet to catch. Third is the strength where again flex surpasses fabric with visible differences, which has made latter’s usage limited to indoor applications. All these together instil that flex is here to stay against all odds.
Other than fabric, how has Indian flex been competing with imported stuff?
As of now, the only major brand from Korea is ‘Starflex’, which has developed a very good repo with the corporate world in India. We are trying the same way now. Lately, we have started promoting our feature-rich flex to the corporates and getting that approved from them. We then forward the lead to our nearest dealer to cater to their future requirements with promising consistency and availability.
How do you promise consistency in quality?
We use world’s best machines and technology, while raw materials are sourced from internationally reputed suppliers that enable us producing everything within our own factory. Our machines and technology are imported from Taiwan, Germany, Korea and China. We take extra care when it comes to maintaining the quality of our products. We buy major ingredients (raw materials) from world’s reputed producers like PVC from Formosa (Taiwan), DOP from Korea and CaCo3 from Vietnam. For the rest, we have indigenous setup.
For instance, Reinforcement Fabric is produced within our factory by using expensive knitting machines from LIBA Karl Mayer, a German technology giant. Paper tube required for flex banner packing is also produced in-house on indigenous machines. Basing on all this, we assure that the quality of our products is better than our competitors.
What all makes Pioneer’s infrastructure?
Our plant is located at SIDCUL Pantnagar, Rudrapur in the state of Uttranchal. The factory spread is over 1 million sq ft where we have 6 fully-automated 4mtr wide PVC calendars to produce best-in-class PVC film for flex banner. All calendars are equipped with Korean and Taiwanese technical collaboration that are first-of-its-kind in India. Besides, we have 14 laminating machines – in hot & cold – imported from Germany, Korea and Taiwan. Our 13 Knitting and 4 warping fabric machines have been imported from Karl Mayer Liba, Germany. We have 4 lines of Celuka machines to produce foam board and Celuka sheets. We do have best quality self-adhesive vinyl line to produce excellent quality products. This apart, roll-up banner standee for advertisement is also being produced with high quality aluminium profiles and best quality components.
What all does Pioneer has in its kitty? Why should one opt for Pioneer over its competitors?
We manufacture flex, vinyl, foam board and standee. Of these, major sales contributor is flex for us followed by vinyl, foam board and standee. There are varieties of Pioneer flex currently available in the market. We have flex banner (front-lit, back-lit, black back and gray back) from 200 GSM to 710 GSM with widths ranging from 1 meter to 3.2 meter in different colour tones like bluish, whitish, yellowish, pure white, and off-white. We do have the option of customised production depending on our clients’ specific requirements. For PVC foam board (forex sheet), we have a variety of thickness options from 1mm to 18mm, while density and size can be customised as per the requirement.
As far as choosing Pioneer is concerned, our customers get added advantage of lower price and very high quality.
What is your distribution model?
We have 200 dealers spread across the length and breadth of the country. In Indian market, we have the largest market share. We are not only catering to Indian customers but also overseas markets. Our products are exported to more than 20 countries including Brazil, Turkey, Dubai, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, etc. Apart from that we are regular exhibitor at all major national and international exhibitions in Dubai, China, Brazil, Thailand, Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey, etc.