Product, quantity band and size. We reply on WhatsApp or email with a per-piece price band, GSM options and a dispatch date.
Every press in Sivakasi has a minimum. Almost none publish it, so every enquiry starts with a question we would rather answer here. Price bands are indicative, per piece, at the quantity stated, for 4-colour work on the paper named — ranges, not quotes.
Paper price, plate count, finishing and quantity move the number. A 2,000-piece run pays make-ready across fewer sheets than a 25,000-piece run; ranges are honest, single figures are not.
Under 500 pieces, a plate-based press cannot beat digital. We will say so and point you to a digital shop rather than quote a number that wastes your time.
Each product page carries size × GSM × quantity tiers at 500 / 1,000 / 5,000 / 10,000 / 50,000. The cost guide has all of them in one place.
| Product & base spec | MOQ | Lead time | Indicative band / pc |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wall calendars12-sheet 15×20", 100 GSM art paper, 250 GSM backing | 500 | 12 – 18 days | ₹18 – ₹32at 5,000 pcs |
| Table calendarsA5 13-sheet, 210–300 GSM art card, wiro | 500 | 12 – 18 days | ₹28 – ₹45at 5,000 pcs |
| DiariesA5 executive, PU cover, 80 GSM inner, sectional-sewn | 500 | 15 – 25 days | ₹95 – ₹180at 1,000 pcs |
| Notebooks172-page long, 58–70 GSM maplitho, centre-pinned | 5,000 | 10 – 15 days | ₹14 – ₹24at 25,000 pcs |
| Labels & stickersSelf-adhesive chromo, sheet-fed offset | 10,000 | 7 – 12 days | ₹0.50 – ₹3at 25,000 pcs |
| Monocartons300 GSM duplex, 4-colour, gloss lamination, die-cut | 2,000 | 12 – 18 days | ₹2.50 – ₹5at 10,000 pcs |
| Brochures4-page A4, 130–170 GSM art paper | 1,000 | 5 – 8 days | ₹4 – ₹7at 5,000 pcs |
| BooksPerfect-bound, 70 GSM maplitho text, art card cover | 500 | 15 – 25 days | ₹0.30 – ₹2 / pageat 5,000+ pcs |
| Wedding cardsWholesale, art card, foil or thermography | 1,000 | 7 – 12 days | ₹8 – ₹25at 1,000 pcs |
The products Sivakasi is actually known for — the ones that justify a plate, a make-ready and a 20×30 sheet. Each card shows the MOQ, the lead time and a starting band at a real quantity.
2027 season openMini 6×8 to Giant 14×40, 3/4/6/12-sheeters, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi and English editions. 80–130 GSM art paper, metal rim or rope hanger.
30% of India's diariesA5, B5 and 1/4 sizes, PU leather, rexine or hardbound covers, 70–80 GSM maplitho inner, sectional-sewn or wiro. Foil, deboss or screen-printed logo.
Long and short notebooks, 76 to 200 pages, single-line, four-line, square and unruled, 58–70 GSM. Printed wrappers, 5-subject and school-board tender supply.
Highest volumeSelf-adhesive sheet and roll, wet-glue, hang tags, pesticide and pharma labels on chromo, metallised polyester or BOPP. The trade Sivakasi was built on.
Export-facing250–400 GSM duplex, SBS and kraft cartons, rigid gift boxes, sweet and bakery boxes, cracker gift boxes. Lamination, spot UV, foil, met-pet, die-line service.
Perfect-bound and sewn books from 500 copies, saddle-stitched brochures 8–48 pp, annual reports, and wholesale wedding invitations for card shops and event planners.
Also: book printing · wedding card printing · daily sheet calendars · table calendars
Online printers and brokers do not own presses in Sivakasi; they buy from one and add their margin. The example below uses an A5 executive diary because a national reseller publishes its retail figure.
Digital-first, retail-scale. Bulk starts at 100 – 3,000 pieces.
Right for 100 visiting cards. Wrong for 25,000 diaries.
Takes your spec to a Sivakasi press and adds a commission.
Useful if you cannot manage a press yourself. You pay for that.
Spec sheet in, ex-factory band out. Nothing between you and the machine.
Published MOQ, published band, a person who has stood at the press.
Get the ex-factory bandNot one Sivakasi press website lists its machine sizes, colours per pass or capacity. Buyers in this trade care, so here is the specification sheet.
| Presses | Sheetfed multicolour offset — 4-colour and 5-colour units (Heidelberg / Komori class); single-colour for text and numbering |
| Maximum sheet | 20 × 30 in (508 × 762 mm); also runs the Indian trade sizes 18 × 23 and 23 × 36 in for imposition efficiency |
| Colours per pass | 4 (CMYK) or 5 (CMYK + Pantone spot, or an in-line aqueous coating) |
| Monthly capacity | Approximately 1.2 crore impressions across the floor, with peak-season overtime from August to November |
| Prepress | Thermal CTP plates, digital proofs within 1 working day, hard proof by courier in 2 – 3 days, colour bars and registration on every sheet |
| Paper range | 58 GSM maplitho up to 400 GSM duplex, SBS/FBB, art card, chromo, metallised polyester and kraft |
| Finishing | Gloss and matte lamination, spot UV, foil stamping, emboss and deboss, die-cutting, met-pet, numbering, perforation |
| Binding | Perfect binding, sectional-sewn, wiro and spiral, saddle-stitch, case binding, centre-pinning for notebooks |
| Artwork intake | PDF / AI / CDR / PSD, 300 dpi, CMYK, 3 mm bleed, fonts outlined; Pantone references named in the file |
A 5,000-piece calendar order, artwork ready, runs on this clock. Sewn diaries and books take the longer end of step four.
Product, quantity, size, GSM, colours, finishing, delivery pincode and deadline. Artwork can follow. You get a per-piece band within 1 working day.
We preflight the file for bleed, resolution and colour, then send a digital proof. A hard proof or a paper dummy goes by courier in 2 – 3 days if you want one.
Written approval on the proof and 50% advance. CTP plates are made the same day and paper is drawn from stock or ordered against your GSM.
Printing, lamination, foil, die-cutting, binding and packing. Calendars and cartons 12 – 18 days; sewn diaries and perfect-bound books up to 25.
Balance 50% before loading. Transporter or courier across India in 2 – 7 days; export loads move to Tuticorin or Chennai port with packing list and invoice.
Branded calendars and diaries for year-end gifting. Logo on the header panel or foil-blocked on the cover, multi-branch dispatch on one invoice.
5,000 – 1,00,000 units · order Aug – NovBlank and semi-custom calendar, diary and notebook stock in lakhs for resale across Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi. Repeat pricing, season after season.
Lakhs of units · year-roundPerfect-bound and sewn books, competitive-exam material, children's books and magazines. Offset from 500 copies; we tell you when digital is cheaper.
1,000 – 10,000 copies per titleSchool notebooks, school diaries, prospectuses and confidential question papers with a controlled press room. Tender documentation and GST invoicing handled.
10,000 – 5,00,000 notebooks · Feb – AprMonocartons, bottle labels, pesticide labels and sweet-box packaging on food-contact inks, with FSSAI and CIB label content checked before plating.
2,000 cartons · 10,000 labels minimumCalendars, diaries, notebooks and boxes for the US, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Singapore. Export packing, FOB / CIF quotes, port documentation.
Container loads · Tuticorin / ChennaiSivakasi has exported printed goods for decades — the cluster includes a 3-Star Export House and presses with overseas branches. Our export desk quotes the same way our domestic desk does: spec in, landed band out.
Sivakasi, in Virudhunagar district, Tamil Nadu, is India's largest offset printing cluster — 520 registered printing units producing roughly 30% of the country's diaries, alongside calendars, school notebooks, labels, wedding cards and monocartons. The presses were set up to print matchbox and firecracker labels for the local match and fireworks trade, then diversified as multicolour sheetfed machines arrived. That history is why paper merchants, plate-makers, die-makers, binders and finishers sit within a few kilometres of each other, and why a printed sheet costs less here than in Delhi, Mumbai or Chennai. Of 191 active offset printers counted in April 2026, only 78 have a website and just 36 publish an email address.
Sivakasi Offset Printing is the printing brand of Winmaxi Holidays & Travels Pvt Ltd, a Coimbatore-registered company at 9/5 Subramaniam Road, Ramanathapuram, Coimbatore 641045. We sell bulk offset print from the Sivakasi cluster to corporates, distributors, publishers, schools, packaged-goods brands and exporters across India and overseas — with the MOQ, the lead time and the rate band printed on the page before you pick up the phone. The Sivakasi printing industry guide carries the full numbers, the "Kutty Japan" story and a buyer's checklist for choosing a press.
Rates, paper and the industry itself — with tables, numbers and a methodology note, so a procurement manager can cite them.
Calendar, diary, notebook, brochure, book, carton and label rates by quantity and GSM. The calendar and diary tables no other guide publishes.
Read the cost guide 02GSM by product, Indian trade sheet sizes 18×23 / 20×30 / 23×36, standard calendar and diary sizes, and a glossary of press-floor terms.
Read the GSM guide 03520 units, 191 offset printers, 30% of India's diaries, why it is called Kutty Japan, why printing is cheaper here, and a 10-point press checklist.
Read the industry guideAlso: Offset vs digital printing — the India break-even table
We give 40,000 diaries and 60,000 wall calendars to members every December. First press that sent a per-piece band before asking for a purchase order, and the dispatch went to 38 branches on one GST invoice.
I buy long notebooks in lakhs for Kerala and Karnataka. 58 GSM and 70 GSM quoted separately, wrapper proof in two days, and the price held for the whole school season. That is all a distributor wants.
Three competitive-exam titles, 5,000 copies each, perfect-bound on 70 GSM maplitho. They told us a 300-copy reprint should go digital instead of taking our money. We came back with the next six titles.
Eight questions we answer every week, with the numbers in them. Product pages carry 8 – 12 more each.
Product, quantity, size and GSM — a per-piece range within 1 working day.
Our MOQ is 500 pieces for calendars, diaries and books, 1,000 for brochures and wedding cards, 2,000 for monocartons, 5,000 for notebooks and 10,000 for labels. Below 500 pieces the plate and make-ready cost makes digital printing cheaper, and we will tell you so rather than quote.
Production lead time ex-Sivakasi is 12 to 18 days for calendars and monocartons, 15 to 25 days for sewn diaries and books, 10 to 15 days for notebooks and 7 to 12 days for labels, counted from artwork approval and advance. Add 2 to 7 days of transport within India. Simple single-sheet jobs can ship in 5 to 8 days.
Calendar sheets run 80 to 130 GSM art paper with a 250 to 300 GSM backing card; diary inner pages 70 to 80 GSM maplitho; school notebooks 58 to 70 GSM; brochures 130 to 170 GSM art paper; table calendars 210 to 300 GSM art card; monocartons 250 to 400 GSM duplex or SBS board. Our paper and GSM guide explains each.
In India the commercial break-even sits at roughly 500 to 1,500 pieces depending on job size. Below it, digital wins because there is no plate cost. Above it, offset wins and the gap widens fast: at 5,000 pieces offset runs at ₹0.30 to ₹2 per page while digital cost stays flat. We only quote offset.
Indicative bands: a 12-sheet 15×20 inch wall calendar ₹18 to ₹32 per piece at 5,000; an A5 executive diary ₹95 to ₹180 at 1,000; a duplex-board monocarton ₹2.50 to ₹5 at 10,000; self-adhesive labels ₹0.50 to ₹3 at 25,000; a 4-page A4 brochure ₹4 to ₹7 at 5,000. Exact price depends on GSM, colours and finishing.
Send print-ready PDF, AI, CDR or layered PSD at 300 dpi, in CMYK with 3 mm bleed and fonts outlined. Pantone spot colours should be named in the file. We return a digital proof within 1 working day; a hard proof by courier takes 2 to 3 days more. Plates are made only after your written approval.
Yes. Every order is invoiced by a GST-registered company with GST shown as a separate line, so corporate, institutional and tender buyers can claim input credit. Printed matter such as calendars, diaries, brochures and labels is classified under HSN 4911 of chapter 49. Terms are 50% advance with the order and 50% before dispatch.
Yes. Sivakasi presses have shipped calendars, diaries, notebooks and boxes to the US, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Singapore for decades. We ship through Tuticorin and Chennai ports on FOB or CIF terms, with export packing in 5-ply cartons on pallets, and reply to export enquiries within 1 business day.
Product, quantity, size, GSM. A real person replies with a per-piece band — 6 am to 11 pm, every day, in Tamil, English or Hindi.