中文Ask most people what a printing cylinder is and they will picture a heavy metal roller smeared with ink — the kind of thing you would not want to drop on your foot. Fair enough. But talk to Parwez Izhar, executive vice president of the Printing Cylinders business at UFlex, and you start to see the cylinder as something closer to a precision instrument, a security device and a branding tool all at once. It is a small but telling sign of how far the humble roller has travelled.
Speaking on the sidelines of the 10th India International Footwear Fair 2026 in New Delhi, Izhar laid out where cylinder technology is heading now that converters are squeezed between rising input costs, currency swings and constant demands for efficiency. The short version: the plain-vanilla cylinder is yesterday’s product. The future is specialised, value-added, and surprisingly clever, and the companies that figure that out will own the margins others are fighting over.
Take coating cylinders. UFlex supplies them for PVDC coating that boosts a film’s barrier properties — the invisible layer that keeps snacks crisp and medicine stable. It also makes anilox and other coating cylinders for lacquer, wax, UV and hot-melt applications. Precision is the name of the game: electromechanically engraved cylinders handle up to around 4 GSM, but when a customer needs 50, 100 or 150 GSM, laser engraving takes over. UFlex has that capability in India, which matters because not every supplier does, and capability is what separates a catalogue vendor from a partner you actually call when something matters.
Then things get interesting. The same cylinder technology is moving into embossing that mimics effects once done by hand — metal embossing, textured and glitter finishes, even 3D effects — for footwear, fashion, textiles, metals, FMCG, home décor and construction. A cylinder becomes the thing that gives a premium handbag its grain or a shoe its exclusive texture. In categories where a product lives or dies on how it feels in the hand, that is not decoration; it is differentiation you can charge for, and it is remarkably hard for a competitor to copy without the same tooling.
The most unexpected turn is security printing. UFlex is weaving hidden text, graphics and micro- and nano-scale text into cylinder designs to fight counterfeiting. These marks stay invisible to the naked eye and only show up under specialised viewing. In a world drowning in fakes — from pharmaceuticals to luxury goods — a cylinder that quietly authenticates a product is a silent competitive moat that nobody on the shop floor even notices, but a brand’s legal team absolutely values. For the converter, it is a reason for the brand to keep the work in-house rather than spread it across cheaper, less trusted suppliers.
Of course, none of this happens in a calm market. Izhar is blunt that the cost environment is uncertain, raw material prices are up, and competition on basic electromechanical cylinders is brutal because “almost every cylinder manufacturing company has” that capability. The escape route is specialisation — premium cylinders with high entry barriers that cheaper rivals cannot easily copy. That is the strategic point converters should absorb: commodity capacity gets arbitraged to the bone, but engineered capability earns margin.
For a converter wondering how to use this, the playbook is concrete. Start by mapping where your customers lose money to fakes or to bland, interchangeable packaging, then propose a cylinder that adds a hidden security feature or an exclusive texture. You move from selling a commodity roller to selling protection and brand identity — and protection and identity are budgets that survive downturns when discretionary spend gets cut.
Sustainability threads through it too. UFlex is optimising the microscopic cell structures on cylinders to use less ink while keeping print precision. Lower ink weight means real savings in ink, solvents and energy, because there is less volume for the drying and heating systems to deal with. Customers, meanwhile, are impatient — turnaround times keep shrinking, and brands in fashion and footwear want new, exclusive textures and logos for every collection. Customization is becoming table stakes, not a premium extra.
Izhar’s bigger point is that the cylinder has outgrown its old job of simply transferring ink or making an emboss. Precision, efficiency, customization, security and compatibility with evolving substrates now define its value. For converters, that is both an opportunity and a warning: the commodity cylinder is a race to the bottom, but the smart cylinder is a route to margin, differentiation and trust — the three things every print business says it wants but few actually engineer for.
For converters, the commercial move is to stop quoting cylinders as commodities and start selling outcomes. When you can offer a hidden security feature that protects a brand from fakes, or an exclusive emboss a competitor cannot replicate, you are no longer a cost line — you are part of the brand’s defence and identity. That shift is what turns a thin-margin roller order into a recurring, harder-to-replace partnership, and it is available to shops willing to invest in the specialised, high-barrier work most competitors avoid.
Source: The Packman (thepackman.in)
