China's packaging industry has a large social demand and its technological content is increasing, making it one of the important industries in China's national economy. It is predicted that from 2011 to 2015, the total output value of the packaging industry could reach 600 billion yuan, growing at an average annual rate of 6%. By 2015, paper packaging products could reach 36 million tons, plastic packaging products 9.46 million tons, metal packaging products 4.91 million tons, glass packaging products 15.5 million tons, and packaging machinery 1.2 million sets. By 2020, China's packaging industry will meet the needs of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, building a new type of Chinese packaging industry with high technological content, good economic efficiency, low resource consumption, low environmental pollution, and full utilization of human resources. The packaging industry has become a sunrise industry with enormous development potential.
The food and beverage industry is a major user of the packaging industry. Currently, China's packaging industry chain is constantly extending, extending to upstream raw materials and downstream consumer markets.
With the discovery and application of more and more packaging materials, the types of packaging materials in China have become richer. Due to the rapid development of the materials industry, many new packaging materials have emerged, such as microwave oven packaging, retort packaging, (polyester) bottles, and various new composite materials, as well as high-performance packaging materials with high compressive strength, barrier properties, heat sealing properties, and gas barrier properties.
Packaging materials are constantly evolving. In addition to traditional paper, plastic, glass, and metal packaging, people have begun to explore the use of new raw materials for packaging, and plant-based raw materials are entering the market. Recently, Dainippon Printing Co., Ltd. announced the development of a transparent vapor-deposited barrier film for packaging materials using plant-based raw materials, "BiomatecIB-PET," and began mass production in September. When bonded with the plant-based polyethylene film "BiomatecPE," it can be processed into packaging materials with excellent barrier properties against water vapor and oxygen. When incinerated after disposal, it can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 50%. This is not only a breakthrough in raw materials but also greatly improves the environmental benefits of packaging.
Currently, China's packaging industry still has many unreasonable aspects. From the product structure perspective, there are many simple and primitive products, and few deep-processed and finely processed products; the proportion of ordinary plastic packaging products is relatively large, and the development of functional packaging products is insufficient; there is an overemphasis on plastic packaging products and equipment, and a lack of focus on technology and research and development; slow product updates and replacements have led to an unreasonable structure of plastic packaging products, which cannot fully adapt to changes in market demand. From the enterprise structure perspective, the overall scale of plastic packaging enterprises is small, and the industrial concentration is low. From the regional structure perspective, the packaging industry in the western region is relatively backward, while the eastern regions of Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Guangdong, and Fujian have very developed plastic packaging industries.
The future development of the packaging industry will not only be limited to the research and development and application of packaging materials themselves but also require efforts in deep processing. China's packaging industry is still at the downstream of the entire packaging industry chain, with a large number of low-level packaging processes. The sustainable development of the packaging industry in the future requires fundamental adjustments to the industrial structure.
Downstream in the packaging industry, the functions of packaging are no longer limited to protecting food and facilitating transportation; it has become one of the value-added points of commodities and an important link in increasing the added value of commodities. Therefore, in the terminal market, packaging companies are paying increasing attention to the humanization and functionality of packaging.
In addition, the packaging industry is beginning to pay attention to its environmental impact. Because the use of packaging materials consumes a large amount of material, or packaging materials pollute the natural environment or damage human health, packaging greening has become an important and eye-catching content in green marketing. Lightweight and biodegradable have become important concepts in the product marketing of many companies. In addition, new concepts such as smart packaging, anti-theft packaging, active packaging, aseptic packaging, and breathable packaging are also beginning to appear around us and are being used by many food and beverage companies.
The packaging industry is currently in a stage of rapid development, but experts predict that in the future, long-standing structural and qualitative defects such as overcapacity, excessive reliance on energy resource consumption, weak independent innovation capabilities, weak enterprise competitiveness, and disproportion between industrial scale and economic efficiency will become prominent. Extending the packaging industry chain, developing the packaging industry, optimizing the industrial structure, and enhancing independent innovation capabilities will be the development trend of the packaging industry in the future.
