China has formed a flexible packaging industry chain as large-scale production accelerates

According to the latest report "Global Flexible Packaging Market Outlook 2018" released by the well-known British research company Pira, the advantages of flexible packaging technology itself have brought enormous changes to the packaging market. Industrial food and products no longer have only one option, low cost, and flexible packaging has become the preferred choice of many consumer products. By virtue of its own characteristics, flexible packaging is encroaching on the markets of tin cans, glass and rigid plastic bottles, and packaging boxes. In the next five years, the global flexible packaging market will rise at an annual rate of 3.5%, and the output value is expected to reach USD 231 billion by 2018.

Broad prospects for the flexible packaging market. Flexible packaging refers to packaging whose container shape can change after the contents are filled or taken out. Currently available on the market are mainly various bags, boxes, sleeves and wrappers made from paper, aluminum foil, fiber, plastic film and their composites. According to survey data, because of its own advantages it has gradually eroded the market of packaging materials such as metal and cartons.

In recent years, with the growth in output of food, beverages, dairy products, cosmetics, cleaning products, beer and condiments, the demand for flexible packaging made of plastics and plastic composite materials has grown larger and larger. As materials and processing technology continue to improve, plastic flexible packaging is playing an increasingly important role in many fields, and people's lives are already inseparable from shopping bags, commodity bags, garbage bags and refrigerator fresh-keeping bags; while industrial product packaging, household daily necessities packaging, clothing packaging and pharmaceutical packaging also make extensive use of plastic flexible packaging films.

In the packaging industry, flexible packaging, with its brilliant colors, rich functions and diverse forms of expression, has become one of the most important packaging formats for shelf sales. The progress of the domestic flexible packaging industry has greatly promoted the development of industries such as food and daily chemicals, and the development of these industries in turn has further driven demand for the flexible packaging market, enabling the flexible packaging industry to gain enormous market momentum. According to forecasts by authoritative institutions, in the next five years the global flexible packaging market will rise at an annual rate of 3.5%, and the output value is expected to reach USD 231 billion by 2018. As the world's second-largest packaging country, China must naturally keep up with the pace of development in this regard.

The level of domestic flexible packaging production lines has risen substantially. Flexible packaging started in China 20 years ago, and the domestic flexible packaging industry has grown from small to large and developed rapidly, showing an obvious trend toward groupization and scale. At present, mainland China alone has about 400 imported gravure flexible packaging production lines and nearly a thousand domestic wide-format high-speed gravure flexible packaging production lines, and the manufacturing level of these production lines has approached or reached the level of developed countries.

At the same time, world-class printing enterprises are accelerating their development in China by means of absolute holding, building new wholly-owned production enterprises and holding companies, and merging and acquiring advantageous Chinese enterprises. For example, recently the global packaging production giant Amcor spent RMB 350 million to acquire the flexible packaging business of Jiangsu Shenda Group. As the packaging market with the most potential, China will naturally attract foreign investment, and for China's flexible packaging color printing enterprises this is both an opportunity and a challenge.

In recent years, China's flexible packaging enterprises have closely followed changes in market demand, promptly adjusted their product structure, tilted resources toward profitability, and achieved product differentiation and structural diversification. High value-added products keep emerging, such as BOPP heat-shrink film, antistatic film, high-clarity film, retort-resistant film, transfer film, high-gloss film, ultra-thin film and synthetic paper, which have gradually achieved industrialization. New products such as BOPPT heat-resistant film, BOPPT in-line coated film, and BOPPT film with added nanomaterials used to make imitation glass and bulletproof glass have become new development trends for BOPPT film.

The green development path of flexible packaging. BOPP plastic film is a very primary flexible packaging material. BOPP plastic film is colorless, odorless, tasteless and non-toxic, and has high tensile strength, impact strength, rigidity, toughness and good transparency. However, it also has problems such as being prone to static buildup, having no heat-sealability, being difficult to recycle and being easy to contaminate.

Under the impact of the environmental protection wave, consumers are placing increasingly higher demands on commodity packaging. The most important meaning of green packaging is to protect the environment, and it also carries the significance of resource regeneration. In the recycling of discarded packaging, there is a common principle: on the premise of satisfying packaging functions, minimize the amount of garbage generated and encourage the use of fewer raw materials. In packaging design, the same material or separable co-existing materials should be used as much as possible, with a tendency toward materials with simple structures that are easy to recycle and regenerate. Therefore, if plastic flexible packaging is to achieve substantial development, it must improve production technology and reduce the use of raw materials. The key is to develop new raw materials that, while reducing the environmental pollution caused by discarded products, improve production efficiency and reduce raw material input. For example, emerging barrier packaging materials.

Green packaging is a requirement of the international environmental protection development trend, and it also represents the development trend of the packaging industry in various countries, and is one of the important elements for improving product market competitiveness and avoiding new trade barriers. At present, China has already made great progress in the recycling of plastic flexible packaging waste. High-strength metallocene polyolefins have successfully reduced the thickness of the entire packaging film; the popularization of coextrusion lamination technology and equipment has effectively solved the problem of precisely controlling the thickness of each layer of film, so that even the expensive barrier layer can be controlled to be very thin, while freshness-preservation performance is improved several times or even dozens of times.

Summary: With the adjustment of market products, the development trend of plastic flexible packaging films is very clear, the market mechanism of survival of the fittest has initially taken shape, and enterprises with small scale and poor quality have basically withdrawn from the market. Therefore, many enterprises are accelerating the pace of large-scale production in combination with product structure adjustment. On the whole, China's flexible packaging industry has already formed its own basic industrial chain.

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