H.R. Syiem, Member (T)

1. By order No. 10 of 1980 (undated) the Collector of Central Excise, Bombay-I, by exercising his powers under Section 35-A of the Central Excises and Salt Act, 1944, revised the assessment of the Assistant Collector of the Central Excise, Bombay Division 'K', in classification list No. 168/79 dated 24th December, 1979, of goods declared as printed aluminium labels assessable under item 68 of the Central Excise Tariff at nil rate of duty by reason of notification No. 55/75-C.E. dated 1-3-1975. The manufacturers, M/s. Metagraphs Private Ltd. claimed the goods to be products of the printing industry and, therefore, exempted under serial No. 13 of the notification. That claim was approved by the Assistant Collector and this led to the revision under Section 35A by the Collector who held that the labels served only the purpose of displaying the name of the manufacturers and the name of the product and were in no way related to the printing industry and, therefore, could not be described as products of that industry. He accordingly modified the Assistant Collector's order and directed assessment of the goods under item 68 without the benefit of the exemption under the notification No.55/75-CE.

2. The learned counsel for the party read from notification No. 55/75-CE and said that the exemption covered

All products of the printing industry, not being newspapers and printed periodicals.

He argued that this exemption covers all products, not only some products, of the printing industry and this assessment had been approved by the Assistant Collector. He read the Collector's show cause notice F. No. V(V-Cell)30-47/80/609 dated 29th May, 1980 and their reply to that notice and pointed out that they wrote that their products denote the name of the manufacturer; the words like Atlas or Raleigh are not printed on the labels, the product would be totally useless and would not be accepted by customers who would like to buy brands of their own choice. The word "printing" had been side-tracked in the show cause notice, because their products are the results of printing done on them. The labels are printed on metal, but they can also be printed on paper; presumably the department would accept them to be products of the printing industry. However, paper labels will have no durability and will not be able to resist wear and tear as metal labels can.

3. The labels are printed on flatbed offset printing presses and the printing is done on a deep offset printing machine. The trade accepts the products as products of the printing industry. Unfortunately, argued the learned counsel, the Collector did not deal with any of these arguments in his order. He read from the order of the Collector and pointed out to the statement that "it is actually the purpose that the products serves which should govern its classification." The counsel said that he totally agreed with this. The purpose of the labels is served by the printed matter which they carry and not their metal nature. The material on which the printing is done cannot make a difference to a product being a product of the printing industry, but only whether there has been printing on it, because printing can be done on almost any material.

4. He would not, of course, advocate acceptance of all printed materials as products of the printing industry; thus paper packaging and wrappers may contain printing but they would not be products of the printing industry, because their purpose is to wrap the goods that they contain and this is their main or primary purpose; the printing is only incidental to the main purpose of wrapping/packaging. They used a printing machine and, therefore, even on this count their goods would qualify as products of the printing industry. The counsel referred to the Harmonised Tariff and note 11 at chapter 48 which reads

Except that the goods of heading No. 48.14 or 48.21, paper, paper-board, cellulose wadding and articles thereof, printed with motifs character