KRCD (India) Pvt. Ltd. was India's first Compact Disc Manufacturing Plant in
India. It was started in July 1995, as KOCH Rajes CD Industries Pvt Ltd., a
joint venture between Koch International GmbH, Austria and Rajes Art Printers,
Mumbai, each holding 51% and 49% equity respectively. At that time, KRCD also
had a technical collaboration with Koch Digital Disc GmbH, (now KDG Mediatech
AG) who provided the technical know how and startup expertise.
The first CD rolled out from our factory on 3rd July 1995, a result of a
dedicated team from Koch Digitaldisc GmbH, (KDD) along with the team from KRCD,
both of whom worked round the clock for almost over a year, building a facility
from the ground up, and establishing an infrastructure which could serve as a
strong foundation for the future formats, in the years to come...
The result, was a state of the art infrastructure which could manufacture CDs
as per the standards currently prevailing in Europe, built drawing on the over
14 years CD manufacturing experience of KDD. The plant was a direct 1:1
transfer from the KDD plant in Austria. This included the batch process CD
manufacturing machinery, in a Class 100 clean room, where a person had to
physically transfer product, between the various processes. (Now a robot
handles this function in the modern installations. Talk about automation
replacing human labour!)
One year later (1996), having established itself in the Indian market, KRCD
invested in a four colour Pad Printing machine, another first in India. With
this acquisition, KRCD could cater to the needs of the CDROM export markets,
which required extensive picture printing. This facility meant that the Indian
software producers had another reason to replicate locally in India.
Due to its consistent high quality standards, and to meet the increasing market
for CDs, KRCD was forced to expand its installed capacity to meet the growing
demands of its customers, who were now manufacturing CDs locally and then
exporting a finished product, instead of replicating abroad as was done
earlier.
In January 1998, KRCD installed its second production line, a brand new
Monoline, a Starline Eco from Data Disc Robots Germany, with a Toolex Alpha
High Density Moulding (HDM) machine, operating with a cycle time of under 3.9
seconds! This added an additional 22,000 CDs to our daily capacity.
This represented a major milestone in replication industry in India, as this
was the first DVD-compatible CD Manufacturing line in the country. Also, the
Starline represented the cutting edge in CD replication technology, at the
time, and the serious commitment of KRCD to invest in a still nascent but
growing market, and to offer the best available resources anywhere
internationally, for the Indian Industry.
Subsequently, the third line, a Toolex Miniliner was added in 1999, further
augmenting its capacity to over 40,000CDs per day, making KRCD the largest
producer of CDs in India, a position still maintained till today.
A five colour silk screen printer was added in the same year to offer faster
delivery schedules for the growing CD market.
Subsequently, in 2002, a double CD line, and a 6 colour offset printing machine
was added.
In 2002, looking at the Indian markets, a strategic decision was by the Indian
promoters to take over KRCD, to focus more strongly on the rapidly growing
Indian market.
Today, we have in house mastering for CD/ DVD formats, and the largest DVD
replication capacity in India.
In early 2005, KRCD tied up with its associate companies, to launch its Navi Mumbai
facilities, which gives it the flexibility to execute its future plans, with
over
40000 Sq ft of factory space over 9600 m2 land area, with a provision for an
additional 40000 sq ft space.
Over the years, due to the confidence and repeat business of our customers,
today, KRCD has an installed daily capacity of over 150,000 CDs, 40,000 DVDs,
10,000 shaping capacity for over 10000 CDs, and with its associate company
Rajes Art Printers, 70,000 cassettes.
Our future plans are to grow in the areas of physical and digital formats, and
to assist the content owners to reach their content to the eventual consumers.
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