Economic Daily-China Economic Net, Beijing, July 6 (Reporter Yang Yangteng) According to statistics, in 2016, the total output value of my country's packaging industry reached 1.9 trillion yuan, ranking second in the world. There are about 250,000 packaging companies in my country, among which there are more than 7,000 enterprises above designated size, with an output value of 1.2 trillion yuan and a profit of 71.5 billion yuan. By the end of the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the total output value of my country's packaging industry is expected to reach 2.5 trillion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 6.79%, of which the output value of the paper packaging industry will exceed 900 billion yuan.

Nowadays, packaging is used as the carrier and protection of the product. With the rise of current cloud computing, mobile Internet, Internet of Things and other technologies, a small packaging box not only contains relevant text and picture information for displaying built-in products, but also Big data collection, product traceability, anti-counterfeiting and full tracking can be realized through mobile phone scanning, and interactive communication with consumers can be realized through AR augmented reality and other effects. Technological innovation is leading the transformation and upgrading of the traditional packaging and printing industry to Industry 4.0 , The wave of intelligent packaging and environmental protection is emerging.

Transformation and upgrading is imminent

"In the application field of the packaging industry, consumer products are a more widely used downstream industry, and the packaging industry has a great correlation with the total retail sales of consumer goods." According to Wang Huajun, chairman of Shenzhen Yutong Packaging Technology Co., Ltd., especially in recent years With the rise of Internet e-commerce and the accelerated pace of consumption upgrades in China, the retail sales of social consumer goods have grown rapidly. From 2013 to 2017, the compound annual growth rate of my country's total retail sales of consumer goods exceeded 10%. During the same period, the compound annual growth rate of my country's packaging industry was 16%. In the first half of 2017, the income of paper packaging enterprises above designated size increased by 14%, and the total profit increased by 14%, outperforming the total sales of social goods.

In terms of total volume, although China has become a major packaging country, there is a gap with developed countries in terms of variety, quality, new product research and development capabilities, and economic benefits. On the one hand, China’s packaging industry has small-scale enterprises and low-level repeated construction. With regard to issues such as low industry concentration, the current trend of industry intensive development has gradually emerged. From the perspective of industrial layout, my country's packaging industry has formed three major industrial belts in the Pearl River Delta with Guangdong as the center, the Yangtze River Delta with Shanghai and Jiangsu and Zhejiang as the center, and the Bohai Rim with Beijing and Tianjin as the center. According to the list of the top 100 Chinese printing companies published by the "Printing Manager" magazine, the number of companies in the three major industrial belts among the top 100 companies has stabilized at around 70% throughout the year, and their sales accounted for nearly 80%.

On the other hand, China’s current packaging products still have a small variety, low quality, and low technical content; the product structure is unreasonable, and the main high-end packaging equipment and raw and auxiliary materials are heavily dependent on imports; packaging science and technology research and development funds are low, and innovation capabilities are insufficient ; Low recycling rate of packaging waste. In view of the key and difficult issues that severely restrict the development of my country's packaging industry, it is urgent to improve the competitiveness of packaging enterprises' development through technological progress, independent innovation, and new product development.

Throughout the history of China’s packaging industry, it is not difficult to find that although many companies have achieved technological innovation and obtained economic benefits through technological transformation, technology introduction, new product development, design and manufacturing, due to the lack of long-term sustainable independent innovation capabilities, Once technological innovation is imitated by competitors and once again caught in a predicament, timely formation of technological innovation capabilities, rapid improvement of technological innovation mechanisms, and promotion of the overall transformation and upgrading of the industry are the key to promoting the development of China's packaging industry in the next few years and even longer.

The general trend of smart packaging

In the "13th Five-Year Development Plan" of China Packaging Industry issued by China Packaging Federation in December 2016, the four key points of the development of the packaging industry were clearly put forward, namely, promoting the sustainable development of green packaging, promoting the in-depth development of safe packaging, and promoting intelligence. The rapid development of packaging promotes breakthrough development in key areas. With the emergence of more and more new technologies, it is an inevitable trend to promote the development of the entire packaging industry in the direction of intelligence.

The so-called smart packaging mainly refers to the use of QR codes, AR augmented reality (image recognition), invisible watermarks, digital watermarks, dot matrix technology, and RFID electronic tags on product packaging through cloud computing, mobile Internet, Internet of Things and other technologies. Collect product information and build a smart IoT big data platform to realize product anti-counterfeiting, traceability, mobile marketing, brand promotion and other functions.

Among them, take the application of RFID technology as an example. RFID is a radio frequency identification technology that can be identified at a long distance (30 meters) and is a relatively mature application of smart packaging. Products with RFID electronic tags can be recognized by induction when they pass through the area equipped with a reader. As long as the product enters the scanning area, all product accumulation calculations can be synchronized instantly. Therefore, in “unmanned supermarkets”, RFID chips are added to the product packaging to sense and initiate a background payment program to realize unmanned sales.

Thanks to the continuous development of intelligent technology, packaging no longer purely assumes the single function of protecting goods, but has become a bridge for the interconnection of everything. The function and value of the packaging industry in the information age are being repositioned. "Using packaging as a carrier, through digital and intelligent technology as a means to achieve packaging visualization, which can help achieve the visualization and efficiency of supply chain management."

Go green and go to the future

With the increasing awareness of national environmental protection, as well as the government, society and printing and packaging enterprises' increasing emphasis on environmental protection, with the help of technological innovation and the continuous deepening of intelligent development, green and environmentally friendly packaging will be the only way for printing and packaging enterprises to achieve sustainable development.

In December 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Commerce clearly stated in the "Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Transformation and Development of China's Packaging Industry" that it is necessary to build an industrial technology innovation system around green packaging, safe packaging, and smart packaging, and focus on cleaner production and green development. Form a green production system covering the entire life cycle of packaging.

In particular, due to the rapid development of the logistics express industry, the large-scale use of disposable express packaging and non-degradable sealing glue has brought a huge burden to the environment. According to statistics, in 2017, China's express delivery business volume reached 40 billion pieces. Last year alone, the total length of tape used for packaging express delivery could go 425 times around the earth's equator, the actual recycling rate of cardboard and plastic was less than 10%, and the overall recycling rate of packaging was less than 20%. Data show that in my country's megacities, the increase in express packaging waste has accounted for 93% of the increase in domestic waste, and in some large cities this figure has reached 85% to 90%.

“Focusing on the core elements of green packaging such as weight reduction, recycling, and recycling, and actively adopting material-saving, easy-to-recycle, scientific and reasonable packaging solutions are the inevitable development direction of current packaging users and packaging companies.” Take express boxes as an example. At present, the new non-tape environmental protection and anti-theft packaging carton developed by Yutong Technology, not only does not require tape sealing, but can be easily packaged in just 10 seconds. The fully enclosed box design increases the bearing pressure by 5 times, which can effectively reduce Damage to contents during transportation.

To realize the sustainable development of the packaging industry, accelerate the development and innovation of new materials, enhance the self-innovation capabilities of packaging enterprises, and implement the combination of high-tech and applicable technologies to develop new products is the top priority.