Packaging Industry Development Policy

In the past 20 years, China's packaging industry has experienced rapid development along with the prosperity of the commodity economy. China has become a big packaging country in the world. However, due to many reasons, China's packaging industry is generally lagging behind in technology, lack of independent intellectual property rights, low level of R&D institutions, and imperfect packaging regulations. These have become the "bottleneck" that restricts the development of the packaging industry. In the face of the impact of China's accession to the WTO and the arrival of a wave of green packaging, it is particularly important for China to achieve its goal of becoming a strong country for packaging and to establish the next phase of development strategies and policies that suit the characteristics of China's packaging industry.
1 The status quo has become a big packaging country, forming an independent and complete modern packaging industry system. The main performance is:
a. The preliminary statistics of the national packaging industry's output value in 2001 was 237.6 billion yuan. The output of paper packaging products has exceeded 14 million tons. It is ranked third in the world after the United States and Japan. The output of plastics, metal and glass packaging products ranks fourth in the world. The container output for transport packaging has already ranked among the world's largest. No. 1. The packaging industry has now ranked 15th in more than 40 industries in China, employing more than 3 million people.
b. Through a large number of imported, digested and absorbed foreign advanced packaging technologies and equipment, China has formed a packaging industry system with complete categories, high levels, and reasonable structure. In East China and Guangdong, there have been a number of large-scale packaging conglomerates whose scale and level are close to the international level. Some products began to export. After the adjustment of industrial structure in recent years, the economic structure of the packaging industry has been more adapted to the needs of market economy development.
c. As it is optimistic about China's huge packaging market, the world's leading multinational packaging companies have come to invest and set up factories in China, accelerating the integration of China's packaging industry and the international packaging industry.
However, compared with advanced countries, China still has many gaps. The main performance is:
a. China's per capita packaging consumption is about 22 US dollars, only about 22% of the world's per capita packaging consumption. The top 1 Japan is as high as 617 US dollars, nearly 30 times higher than us.
b. Most of China's packaging companies are small in scale, lag behind in technology, lack capital, have low labor productivity, and have low product quality. A considerable portion of medium and low-end packaging products exceed supply. For example, the packaging and decorating printing industry has a production utilization rate of 75.8%, a plastic packaging box and a container of 69.5%, a glass packaging container of 67.1%, a metal packaging barrel of 52.4%, and a metal can of 45.4%. Coupled with such factors as the management of backwardness, the country's packaging companies have a large loss.
c. So far China has basically no modern packaging systems, materials and products with independent intellectual property rights. Existing advanced packaging technologies, systems, equipment, and high-grade packaging materials still have to rely on imports.
d. As China's manufacturers of goods have not paid enough attention to the packaging industry, and the packaging industry itself lacks a high level of specialized R&D institutions, most of them have imitated the packaging structure of similar foreign products, and the packaging costs are relatively high. Can not do scientific and reasonable packaging. Some sales packaging, in order to compete for the market, there is a tendency to re-decorated function, light protection function, will not design economical and reasonable packaging, so that packaging costs accounted for 30% -70% of the cost of goods, and even more than the cost of the product itself. The economic losses caused by poor packaging have risen in recent years. For example, due to unreasonable packaging, flat glass has a circulation loss of up to 8%.
The backwardness of China's packaging technology on the one hand is due to the fact that the state has very little investment in packaging research and development, and on the other hand it is related to the shortage of technical personnel in the packaging industry. Although more than 40 colleges or universities in China currently have undergraduate or similar majors in packaging engineering, they can graduate more than 2,000 packaging engineering students each year. However, because the packaging industry of the enterprise and most of the packaging products companies are treated less favourably than other industries, packaging It is difficult for the industry to attract these middle-level technical and managerial talents. Now that the technical personnel working in the packaging industry are still outflows, the professional technicians in the packaging industry currently account for only about 2% of the total number of employees, which is much lower than the average level of 6.8% in the national industry. . The junior technicians or technicians mainly rely on the training of secondary schools for packaging. The situation is roughly similar to that of universities. Since 1985, some colleges and universities started the undergraduate major in packaging engineering, and through the efforts of everyone, the relatively independent emerging disciplines of packaging engineering have basically taken shape in China, and 13 national textbooks have been edited and published systematically to reflect the packaging process discipline system. , keep up with the international development trend. The National Board of Education once included the packaging project as a secondary discipline in the “Disciplinary, Professional Catalogue for the Granting of Doctoral Degrees, Master Degrees, and Graduate Training Courses” in 1996. However, it was compressed in 1997, resulting in packaging research, education, and management. The interruption of the formal channels for the cultivation of senior personnel has made the backwardness of China's packaging technology innovation capabilities worse. The vocational and technical training in the packaging industry is far below the level of advanced foreign countries. Therefore, in the absence of input and lack of talent, the technological progress of the packaging industry is difficult to adapt to the needs of the packaging industry to transform to a strong country.
China's packaging regulations are very imperfect, and the study of packaging standards has lagging far behind the development of the situation, and it is very difficult to adapt to the new situation after China's accession to the WTO. In the past two years, due to the lack of understanding of the standards of foreign wood packaging products by some enterprises in China, they did not meet the requirements of the foreign packaging products for the inspection, resulting in the loss of about 7 billion US dollars in export commodities. There is a big gap between China's packaging standards and the popular green packaging standards in foreign countries, which have caused the products of some enterprises in China to be unable to export to these countries. The counterfeit and inferior packaging of medicines and foods that affect people’s life safety has not been stopped and urgently needed to be rectified.
2 After the target's entry into the WTO, it is estimated that the gross national product of China's economy will increase by 2.94%. In particular, the increase in exports of labor-intensive industries and light industrial products will be even greater, which will inevitably promote the rapid development of China's packaging industry. At the same time, we must also see that foreign large-scale packaging companies will also participate in the competition in the domestic packaging market. If packaging companies in China cannot quickly advance the level, grade, quality, and management, they will be eliminated and forced to close, resulting in social Unstable. To this end, we must strive to develop China from a packaging power to a packaging power within 10-15 years. The specific strategic goals are:
a. Accelerate the structural adjustment of packaging enterprises in China, support a group of well-known brand large-scale enterprise groups with independent intellectual property rights in core technologies, and compete with existing multinational packaging companies in the world, while nurturing a large number of small and medium-sized packaging with characteristics and vitality. Enterprises, rational division of labor, coordinated development, so that the company's product quality and efficiency reached the international advanced level.
b. China should be able to produce a sufficient number of internationally competitive packaging products. Can also participate in the international division of labor and competition, not only to meet the needs of the domestic packaging market, in particular, can become Asia's packaging market packaging technology and packaging materials, products and equipment export center. Conditional packaging companies can go abroad to set up factories.
c. Establishing sound packaging regulations and standards system with international advanced level.
d. Basically solve the problem of clean production in the packaging industry, so that our country's resources and environment can be effectively protected, so that our packaging industry can be healthy and sustainable development.
e. Each large-scale enterprise has its own product packaging technology development center, and large-scale packaging companies have established R&D centers for new products and new technologies. Both countries and regions have established world-class packaging research institutes and have established world-class packaging engineering disciplines and national-level laboratories in some universities.
f. Has a packaging information network system that is networked throughout the country and connected to the world. It has established an effective e-commerce networking platform for packaging products and has made it a leader in the world.
3 Countermeasures In order to achieve the above strategic goals, we must take strong countermeasures to strengthen the advantages of packaging in China and upgrade the level of the entire packaging industry.
a. Strengthen the function of China Packaging Technology Association, be a good assistant of the government, do a good job in the revision of the package development plan, put forward the packaging industry policy and product development directory, assist the government in strengthening the macro-control of the packaging project, and prepare the drafting of the packaging law. Packaging statistics, revision of packaging standards, implementation of packaging quality certification system, standardization of the issuance of production licenses for packaging products, assisting packaging companies in developing domestic and foreign markets, organizing research and development of key packaging technologies, actively carrying out technical training for employees, and vigorously promoting international cooperation. Exchanges, increase intermediary, consulting, or anti-dumping agency services for packaging companies.
b. Improve and improve the professional committees and regional package associations under the China Packaging Technology Association. Relevant government departments or units that rely on them should provide strong support in terms of human and financial resources. In the future, the China Packaging Technology Association will not only focus on the packaging manufacturers themselves, but also expand the association between the China Packaging Association and major industry associations such as food and pharmaceuticals to provide services for both the front industry and the packaging manufacturers.
c. In cultivating brand-name large-scale packaging enterprises with core technological competitiveness, the state should provide support in the provision of government loans and policies, vigorously develop new products, and reduce the dependence of some of China's high-end packaging materials on foreign countries. In particular, we must support the packaging equipment manufacturing industry in China to solve the supply problems through specialized production and joint operations, improve performance and reliability, provide packaging companies with high-quality equipment, expand exports, and meet the challenges of a packaging machinery powerhouse. In order to solve the difficulty of financing loans for technical integration in the consolidation and integration of small and medium-sized packaging companies and the joint development strategy, a certain number of technical reform funds can be established under the auspices of the China Packaging Technology Association.
d. Using the opportunity of the International Packaging Organization (WPO) to agree to establish an Asian packaging center in China, the China Packaging Technology Association should operate in accordance with the rules of market operations, and strive for strong support from the national and local governments in terms of funds and policies, as soon as possible. The packaging center has become an international integrated high-tech demonstration packaging enterprise, national packaging R&D center, global packaging information and e-commerce center, domestic and international packaging machinery development and maintenance centers and other large-scale projects. For the promotion of China's packaging industry in Asia and even the world's image and the realization of the goal of China's packaging power, has a very important strategic significance and practical significance.
e. Intensify efforts to establish China's green packaging industry system, speed up the process of integration with advanced international packaging standards, and respond to the technical barriers and environmental protection barriers imposed by countries on packaging. Packaging companies should pass ISO9000, ISO14000, ISO16000, ISO18000 certifications for packaging products as soon as possible. China Packaging Technology Association shall assist the country to formulate the “Regulations for the Management of Packaging Wastes” and establish a nationwide chain of waste resource recycling companies. It will take the lead in implementing clean production management in the packaging industry and develop green packaging materials and packaging waste separation and recovery systems.
f. The State Bureau of Technical Supervision shall strengthen guidance and support for the revision of packaging standards. China Packaging Technology Association should organize a special team to conduct research on relevant international laws and regulations. Each year, a certain amount of special funds are allocated to support the revision of China's packaging regulations and standards system. For emerging packaging systems born under the new situation, we must strive to formulate new standards that are scientifically strong and increase them to international packaging standards so as to avoid repeating the “downstream soup” in the future world packaging industry division of labor. The embarrassment of dancing in a circle delineated by others influences the entry of Chinese goods into the international market. Support efforts to move ISO-affiliated packaging sub-committees from Turkey to China.
g. The state should increase investment in packaging research and education. The key projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology should include the contents of corresponding packaging technologies. In addition to packaging higher education and secondary education, it is particularly important to restore the second-level status of packaging engineering in the postgraduate directory so as to facilitate the cultivation of high-level packaging talents. This is the key to improving China's ability to independently develop advanced packaging technologies. Domestic enterprises should pay attention to the use and cultivation of packaging talents, and create an environment that can attract packaging technology and management talents. While actively carrying out various vocational and technical trainings, China Packaging Technology Association should gradually establish an appraisal system for packaging mechanics that suits China's national conditions. Each packaging professional committee shall regularly carry out the promotion and training of new technologies.
h. At present, logistics in China is completely imitation of foreign countries. They are basically developed for the supermarket-based circulation system. When changing from supermarket to warehousing, there was no corresponding change in packaging. However, in modern logistics systems and electricity