P. K. Abdul Kader, managing director of Metro Printing Press, LLC, Sharjah in conversation with Venkat Raghavan, shares his four decades of printing experience and explains the transformations he saw in these years

Formerly from India, PK Abdul Kader did his schooling in St. Thomas School, Kerala. He started his career with UMA printers, Trisur, Kerala where he learnt all the printing basics. Later in 1976 he came to United Arab Emirates to start his career in printing industry. In a short span of five years he started his own printing press and in another thirteen years he purchased an own plot and built the press in it.
Talking about his career, Abdul Kader commented, “My career started when I was pursuing my education in Workers College from Trisur. While I was pursuing I started to work in UMA printers. I do not have any educational background towards printing industry and however with the eagerness in the job I learnt everything from there. I worked there almost six years. In 1976, my uncle PP Ummarhaaj has helped me to come to UAE for a job and to be honest I wouldn’t come to UAE if he is not there. I joined in Modern Printing Press as a camera operator and the company gave a good exposure to me in regards to the camera processing. During my tenure in Modern Printing Press my colleague named KV Thomas who is the chairman of Thomson group has helped me a lot to pass through the hard days. Later, I joined in Al Yum Printing Press, Sharjah as a camera operator in-charge. After sometime I was looking for some other opportunities and took an offer at Al Mawrid Printing Press. It was a different exposure for what I had learnt from the previous companies. After working for few companies suddenly something sparked my mind to start my own printing press. However, with the same confidence what I had before I started Metro Printing Press in 1981 at Corniche, Sharjah with five employees. During that time, I was struggling to purchase a machine and couldn’t even get a loan from banks for the machine. However, Ali Al Hasemi gave a machine for half the price without any profit which is the second reason for what I am now. Later when years pass on, I was able to do a very good business with a swift growth. Since, I was looking for papers, I approached Vimpex (Vienna) and during that time Louai Kuzbari was the chief of everything. After seeing my business he granted 6 million AED worth of paper trading without any credit LIMIT or LC. I was really happy with the offering he gave and this is the third reason of what I am now. Currently, we are doing a pretty decent job and will be doing good in the future.”

Highlights
● Printing Press was started in 1981 with five employees
● Kader has more than four decades of experience in printing industry
● The press has received several awards from Sharjah Police

He added about his printing press, “Metro Printing Press was starting with screen printing and camera processing jobs in the year 1981 as a small settings by myself. With real hard work and dedication I have developed this company as one of the leading packaging and commercial printing house.Even though we started with screen printing unit and gradually converted into an offset printing unit and gradually Metro become the pioneer in making card board boxes especially, tissue boxes, perfume boxes in the local market. Inorder to serve the clients/customer better in a more professional approach we acquired 104000 sq.ft land in Sharjah Industrial area 5, where we constructed own printing house in 1994. At Present Metro is renowned as a complete solution provider related to packaging and commercial printing and enjoys credibility and reputation for its high ethical standards of professional integrity and confidentiality. That’s how the Metro called “All your printing needs under one roof”.
He explained about the trends he saw in the printing industry, credit period, the region scope and companies future, “During my days we use to do go through process like film mounting, pasting and many more and now it has changed to CTP. Earlier we need time to print all jobs where at least few days for short run jobs but nowadays everything has been abridged and you can get instantly. In this current industry everything has become very easy so you don’t need to wait for anything. The credit period is one of the difficult tasks to handle in the entire region. Our company period varies from 60 through 120 days. We do business in countries like AGCC countries and Germany. Around 30% of the business we do for the overseas countries and remaining we do in UAE. The region always has very good scope for every industry and particularly the printing industry. I would definitely say that the best place in the world to do a job would be UAE which would make you remain happy foreve. We are doing a better business in the current market and if the things goes well we will be expanding further more towards packaging.”
Signing off, he advices that to run a profitable business you need to give a competitive price, low price purchasing from the distributors, offer minimum credit to customers, and finally offer marginal profits.