Insufficient Innovation in Food Packaging Machinery in China Constrains Development

At present, the output value of China's food packaging machinery is about 30 billion yuan, while the annual import of food packaging machinery is about 1 billion US dollars. Food processing and packaging machinery manufacturing is an important industry that provides technical equipment for the food industry. In recent years, it has gradually developed into one of China's fastest-growing and most dynamic pillar industries in the national economy. However, due to the late start, lack of technical resources and other reasons, China's food processing and packaging machinery manufacturing technology innovation capability is very weak.

The improvement of the people’s living standards in the food industry is obvious. The market outlook for the food machinery industry is generally optimistic. However, for the domestic food machinery plant operators, is this market a delicious cake or a hot potato? He Nanzhi, executive vice chairman of the China Food and Packaging Machinery Industry Association, said: "At present, many domestic food processing and packaging machinery manufacturers are passive in their development, and many technological improvements are also helpless."

In the past 20 years, the food industry has promoted the development of food packaging machinery. The food processing industry, whose basic characteristics are a large number of transformed agricultural products, has been developing at an alarming rate. It has become one of the fastest growing industries in China's national economy. From the early 1980s to the present, the entire country The average annual growth rate of the food industry reaches 13% to 14%. The agricultural product processing industry first provided a broad space for development for the packaging industry. Any processed food can not be separated from packaging, including sales packaging and transport packaging. The first to benefit from this is packaging machinery.

China's food packaging machinery industry started in the early 1980s. Since its establishment, there are nearly 6,000 food and packaging machinery manufacturers in China, but about 2,000 of them are not stable enough. Nearly 15% of companies turn or close down each year. About the same number of new companies enter the industry. On the one hand, it illustrates the fierce competition in this industry. On the other hand, it shows the attractiveness and vitality of the industry, and everyone's preference for the future. In this industry, only a dozen or more companies have annual sales of more than 100 million yuan, and 50 companies have annual sales of more than 30 million yuan. 75% of the industry’s export products are produced by these 50 companies. This shows that large enterprises have a relatively high level of technology and production capacity, and they have an absolute advantage in market competition.

Now, packaging machinery has become one of the top ten industries in China's machinery industry. China's food packaging machinery and equipment are not only on the scale, but are also accelerating the advancement of electro-opto-mechanical integration and automation. Great progress has been made in filling equipment, packaging equipment, and packaging material production equipment. However, the export value of packaging machinery in China is still less than 5% of the total output value, but the import amount is roughly the same as the total output value. This shows that China's demand for packaging machinery gap is very large, compared with foreign products, domestic packaging machinery, the gap between the level of science and technology is still relatively large, far from meeting domestic demand.

In addition, there are about 1,300 varieties of packaging machinery in China, lacking high-tech, high-precision, high-quality accessory products, low product performance, poor stability and reliability, short life span, rough surface treatment, and unattractive appearance. The technology of packaging machinery in China The overall level is about 20 years behind the advanced countries. From the perspective of the enterprise, there are few leading enterprises in the domestic packaging machinery industry, and there are not many companies with high technological level, large production scale, and product quality that meets international standards; from the development of scientific research products Look, still basically remain in the test imitation stage, self-development ability is not strong, scientific research investment is small, the funds only account for 1% of sales, and developed countries up to 8 to 10%.

High-end technology helps packaging machinery product upgrade He Nanzhi pointed out that from the perspective of automation technology application, the gap between China's food machinery industry and foreign developed countries is more obvious. In recent years, local companies are also interested in improving their competitiveness in this area, but technological improvements have gradually evolved with changes in market acceptance. The more mature technology used abroad is more easily adopted by domestic companies, but at the same time it also restricts the active development of the local food machinery manufacturing industry. Therefore, changing the development model requires a change in the management philosophy of local companies while drawing on advanced technologies.

At present, the detection technology in the food processing and packaging process is not limited to the detection of impurities in the production line. With the increasing emphasis on food inspection, the application of detection technology has been further expanded.

He Nanzhi said: “In the past, our food machinery manufacturers have paid less attention to food inspection technology. Compared with the improvement of the whole machine performance, there is a lot of room for food testing technology development.” He Nanzhi pointed out that the current food processing and packaging process The detection technology in China is not limited to the detection of impurities on the production line. With the increased emphasis on food inspection, the application of detection technology has been further expanded. In machine vision products, color machine vision products are more prominent in the application of food detection, we can determine the maturity and quality level and other parameters through the color of food. In addition, with the increasing popularity of wireless sensor network applications in recent years, some large-scale food processing plants in foreign countries have applied it to food information acquisition systems that ensure food safety. Through the wireless sensor network, food processing plants can provide consumers with a complete understanding of food production, transportation, storage and other related information, so that intuitive and transparent information has greatly eliminated their concerns about food safety. At the same time, it is also helpful for the regulatory authorities to find problems in a timely manner and is well documented to prevent food safety problems from occurring.

Speaking of the application of new food packaging technology, He Nanzhi gave an example: “A few years ago, packaging machinery products applied in some foreign food factories were applied to the automatic identification function, which provided a variety of product packaging together It is extremely convenient, fast and accurate packaging, while eliminating the visual and physical fatigue of manual operations, but this technology is still less used in China, so the promotion of new technologies in the country must take into account market demand, consumer attitudes And other factors."

In the face of such a precise and labor-saving method, most domestic companies still say "no". He Nanzhi pointed out that the well-known food factories in developed countries have a large demand for products, so that the application of some new technologies can directly increase the production efficiency, and the cost of introducing the technology will be greatly reduced. Most of the domestic food plants in China are mainly small and medium-sized enterprises. This advantage of efficiency improvement is not obvious. At the same time, China's food industry, especially the food packaging industry, needs long-term introduction of a large number of advanced foreign technologies and equipment. The consequence is that the high-end equipment market share of China's large-scale packaging companies is almost occupied by foreign equipment. This passive development often leads domestic food processing plants to use automation to upgrade equipment when they are forced to do so. Therefore, the Chinese packaging industry should proceed from reality. While introducing technology, independent innovation is also essential, so as to produce equipment suitable for the needs of the domestic market.