China's packaging industry demand decline is uncertain

China's food and packaging machinery manufacturing industry began in the second half of 2008 and was affected by the international financial crisis. Although it still maintained a trend of rising in contrarian conditions, its growth rate slowed down and it was clearly inferior to that of previous years. "He Nanzhi, secretary-general of the China Food and Packaging Machinery Industry Association, said in an interview recently.

Decline in domestic demand

“Although the economic performance of food and packaging machinery in the large machinery industry is slightly better, the industrial added value is obviously not as good as in previous years,” said He Nanzhi. From January to August 2009, the profit growth rate of the machinery industry was 6.83%, while that of the food and packaging machinery industry was 18.42%, second only to heavy mining machinery (21.66% growth rate), slightly higher than that of the automotive industry ( Growth rate of 17.73%). From January to November of 2009, the export of packaging machinery decreased more, which was 28.71% lower than the same period of last year. As the proportion of exports of food and packaging machinery industry is relatively small, the impact of export decline on the industry is not yet great. However, due to the impact of the international financial crisis, the domestic demand for food and packaging machinery has generally declined.

In the first 11 months of 2009, the growth rate of the packaging machinery industry was below 10%, and the new product's output value and exports all showed a negative growth. In particular, the output value of new products in 2009 was not very good, compared with the same period in 2008, 2009 Every month from January to November is declining, and the rate of decline in the first 11 months is above 20%. “This is a dangerous sign. It shows that the pace of new product development is slowing, or that new products that have been developed do not sell well. Even if a few companies that did well in 2009 do not pay enough attention to the development of new products, the company’s development momentum is not enough. The development of the industry can not only rely on the increase in the sales of old products, there is no new product to do technical support, and where does technological progress come from? It is hoped that the industry and enterprises will attach great importance to it." Secretary-General Ho Nam-tzu said without hesitation.

The gap can not be ignored

He Nanzhi pointed out that with the prosperity of China's commodity economy and the improvement of people's living standards, the prospects for food packaging machinery packaging technology are very optimistic. In recent years, the state has increased its supervision over the quality and safety of foods and medicines, and has put forward new requirements for the production, processing, and packaging of foods. A batch of food production enterprises have invested funds for technological transformation of packaging equipment and innovation of production technology, which has improved the level of food and pharmaceutical industry and market competitiveness in China to some extent, but our food packaging machinery is in competition with developed countries. It is also clearly in a weak position. About 30% of enterprises in the packaging machinery industry in China have low-level redundant construction. This situation not only wastes important resources such as limited funds and manpower, but also causes chaos in the packaging machinery market, hinders the healthy development of the industry, and restricts China's small and medium-sized food packaging machinery upgrading and packaging technology innovation.

China's food packaging machinery is mostly based on stand-alone machines, with low scientific and technological content and automation. It is less applicable to new technologies, new processes, and new materials, and it cannot meet the requirements of China's current food enterprise development. Some food companies have had to spend large sums of money to import some advanced food packaging production lines with advanced technology, high production efficiency, and high packaging precision for a technological transformation, resulting in a large part of the domestic market share being occupied by foreign brands.

Comparing the major gaps between domestic food packaging machinery and foreign brands, there are mainly two aspects:

The first is low production efficiency, high energy consumption, poor stability and reliability, backward product appearance, rough appearance, low life of basic parts and accessories, and poor quality of domestically produced pneumatic parts and electrical components. For example, Henan Xinghuo Packing Machinery Co., Ltd. is based on the advanced foreign packaging machine technology, based on the transformation and innovation products, the pneumatic part of the Spark brand filling machine adopts the pneumatic components of Germany FESTO and Taiwan AirTac.

The second is that the application of control technology is less. Such as remote control technology, stepper motor technology, information processing technology. In today's world, Germany, Italy, the United States, and Japan are leading in the level of packaging machinery. Among them, the United States has rapidly updated three types of machinery and equipment for molding, filling, and sealing. For example, the liquid filling machine produced by EJF can realize gravity filling, pressure filling and positive pressure mobile pump filling. That is to say, any viscous liquid can be realized by changing the filling method by microcomputer control.

In recent years, this kind of technology has emerged in China, such as Jiangsu Qunjie Packaging Machinery Factory, Guangzhou Ote Packaging Machine Company and so on.

With the development of global science and technology, developed countries have integrated nuclear energy technology, microelectronics technology, laser technology, biotechnology and systems engineering into traditional machinery manufacturing technologies. New alloy materials, polymer materials, composite materials, inorganic non-metallic materials and other new materials have also been promoted. The integration, intelligence, networking, and flexibility of food packaging machinery will become the mainstream of future development.

The packaging machinery industry is facing the needs of the market and how to catch up with and even exceed the food packaging machinery of developed countries, and how to increase the pace of independent innovation, and strive to develop a group of products with independent intellectual property rights and international advanced level in a short period of time. The urgent task facing China's food packaging machinery companies.

Prospects for market development are still promising

At present, the global demand for packaging machinery is growing at a rate of 5.3% per year. The United States has the largest producer of packaging equipment, followed by Japan, and other major producers are Germany, Italy and China. However, the fastest growing production of packaging machinery and equipment is in developing countries and regions.

There are few manufacturers that can carry out professional research and development in the domestic packaging machinery manufacturers, which is also an inadequacy of our country. However, domestic packaging machinery manufacturers continue to make efforts in the domestic packaging machinery in the measurement, manufacturing, technical performance and other aspects have achieved good results, especially beer, beverage filling equipment, high-speed, complete sets, high degree of automation, and good reliability. There is also the emergence of mechatronics, so that the demand for automated packaging machine equipment surged.

With the changes in the market, domestic packaging machinery is also growing. Domestic packaging machinery manufacturers are developing to develop faster, lower-cost packaging equipment, and companies that already have packaging machinery and equipment have updated or added packaging machinery production lines to future products. The proportion will increase, especially in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries.