NEW DELHI (Feb. 9, 3:15 p.m. ET) -- The Indian wing of German packager Bericap Holding GmbH plans to widen its product portfolio in the country this year, entering more into specialty segments like lube and edible oils and expanding in the bottle water segment, according to a Bericap official at the PlastIndia trade show, held Feb. 1-6 in New Delhi.

The company has a plant in Talegoan with an installed capacity of more than 1 billion closures a year and anticipates further growth from product conversion from glass to PET, said Javareh Daroga, sales & marketing director for the Bericap’s India unit, based in Pune.

“The industry will only get bigger but better in times to come with the conversion of reusable glass bottles to PET on the beverage front and the increasing need for safe packaged drinking water,” he said. “On the specialty front the growth will be driven by customer’s demand for elegant packaging that enhances brand value, the requirement of anti-counterfeit solutions, and storage & dispensing options.”

Still, he cautioned that “the entire picture is yet to emerge.”

India’s caps and closures industry is very fragmented and competitive, with most companies using compression molding technology, he said. It set up the Talegoan factory in 2007.

“Only a few organized players such as us use the state of the art injection molding technology for the production of caps and closures,” he said. “The majority of the manufacturers use the compression molding technology, which is not capital intensive compared to injection molding.”