Stovec Industries is a textile-printing specialist that makes both the machines that print on fabric and the screens and inks those machines consume - a razor-and-blades model built over five decades inside a Dutch printing group. Incorporated in the early 1970s in Ahmedabad, it grew from a domestic manufacturer into the global competence centre for rotary screen-printing within the SPGPrints network, and it has since added digital printers and inks to its portfolio. The recurring pattern is that Stovec anchors a business unit, masters a precision-manufacturing process, and then sells the equipment and the recurring consumables together - so customers who buy its machines keep coming back for years.
Business segments
Two engines that share a factory and a core skill in electroforming - a textile-printing powerhouse that supplies machines and the consumables that run on them, and a smaller graphics business that applies the same precision-metal technology to packaging and labels.
1. Textile consumables and machinery: the razor-and-blades engine of a printing group
Stovec sells rotary and digital textile-printing machines and then supplies the perforated screens, lacquers and inks that those machines consume every day - so most of its revenue is recurring, not one-off.
- The screens are the recurring revenue - rotary screen-printing runs on cylindrical nickel screens perforated with the design pattern, and Stovec manufactures these NOVA screens in a fully air-conditioned plant alongside lacquers, engraving chemicals and auxiliary chemicals that printers reorder continuously.
- Machines create the installed base - the rotary portfolio spans models like the Pegasus EVO, RD8 ID and the India-developed TEAK, which won a textile-machinery R&D award in 2023 and handles fabrics up to 2.45 metres wide, while the digital side offers printers named after flowers - Rose, Jasmine, Magnolia - for direct-to-fabric and transfer printing.
- Digital inks follow the printers - the company developed its own digital inks, branded with butterfly names like Morpho and Alcon, so customers who buy a Stovec digital printer can source the matching ink from the same supplier.
- It upgrades what it already sold - Stovec created technology-upgrade packages for its old installed base of Pegasus EVO machines to improve stability and extend machine life, and it added Universal Repeat functionality to the standard Pegasus EVO, turning a service need into a revenue stream.
- The factory is the global hub - under a FY26 restructuring, Stovec’s Ahmedabad plant became the lead entity and central hub for the entire Textile Business Unit of the SPGPrints Group, responsible for product ownership, manufacturing, R&D and strategic decisions worldwide.
2. Graphic products: precision metal for packaging and labels
The same electroforming process that makes textile screens also produces Anilox rollers and specialised screens for printing on labels, cartons and packaging - a small but natural extension of the core factory’s skills.
- Electroforming shared with textiles - the graphic segment draws on the same nickel-electroforming expertise that Stovec built for rotary textile screens, applied instead to RotaMesh and RotaPlate screens and Anilox rollers for the label and package-printing industry.
- Exhibited alongside its textile cousins - the company showcased its graphic screens at LabelExpo India, a dedicated label and package-printing exhibition, reaching a different set of buyers from the same Ahmedabad plant.
Group structure and partners
Stovec is a 71%-owned listed subsidiary of SPGPrints B.V. of the Netherlands, and it is in the process of buying the intellectual property it has long licensed from its parent - a move that would turn a royalty expense into a royalty income.
- Stovec has no subsidiaries, associates or joint ventures of its own; it is a single-entity operation with one factory in Ahmedabad, roughly 250 employees, and a debt-free balance sheet.
- The parent, SPGPrints B.V., runs nine international facilities across China, India, the Netherlands, Brazil and Austria, serving customers in over 100 countries with a workforce of more than 900 people.
- Stovec currently manufactures rotary printing machines and NOVA screens under a royalty arrangement with SPGPrints B.V., but it intends to acquire the full intellectual property rights - technical know-how, designs, trademarks and manufacturing processes - for ₹153 million, which would end its royalty payments and instead bring in roughly ₹7.9 million a year in royalty from a Chinese group company that uses the same technology.
- A discontinued galvanic consumables segment was wound down in mid-2022, and a contract manufacturing agreement for sugar sieves was terminated around the same time, leaving the company focused entirely on textile and graphic printing.