How Should the Packaging Industry Usher in a New Era? Elevating Quality and Boosting Efficiency to Forge a New Landscape in Packaging

The “Three-Product” Strategy Guides Industrial Upgrading

In the packaging industry, the “Three Products” refer to the variety, quality, and brand of packaging products. In 2018, the variety of packaging products will increase substantially, their quality will improve markedly, and greater efforts should be made to cultivate and strengthen packaging brands.

In terms of packaging product variety, we must center on supply-side structural reform in the packaging industry. Building on the optimization of traditional product mixes and the consolidation of advantages in core products, we should proactively adapt to smart manufacturing models and diversified consumer demands, thereby strengthening our capacity to provide supporting services for consumption upgrading. By innovating design approaches, production processes, and technological solutions, we will vigorously develop new packaging materials, new products, and new equipment, driving both an expansion of product variety and an enhancement of supply-service capabilities. At the same time, priority should be given to developing green, reusable, and high-performance packaging materials; accelerating the development of networked, intelligent, and flexible complete sets of packaging equipment; and aggressively promoting functional, personalized, and customized mid- to high-end products. Through diversifying product offerings and optimizing product mix, we will stimulate demand and drive consumption.

With regard to the quality of packaging products, enterprises should be guided to comprehensively enhance product quality across all stages—design, material selection, production, testing, and management. On the one hand, low-cost and green manufacturing technologies should be actively adopted to develop lightweight, high-strength, and functional paper-based packaging solutions, thereby expanding the application scope of paper packaging. The use of environmentally friendly raw materials and additives should be encouraged to produce customizable, eco-friendly plastic packaging, with a focus on improving the protective, shelf-life-preserving, and smart features of such products. On the other hand, the adoption of new materials—such as thin-walled metals, coated steel, and coated aluminum—for manufacturing metal packaging is advocated, in order to increase the utilization rate of metal packaging materials and enhance their corrosion resistance.

Packaging product brands should prioritize the R&D of green packaging materials, intelligent packaging equipment, and high-end packaging products, with the goal of establishing a portfolio of brands in these categories that command a substantial share of the domestic market and strong international competitiveness.

Technological Innovation Enhances Competitive Advantage

Addressing the challenge of enhancing the quality and efficiency of economic development is a crucial component of bolstering the competitiveness of the packaging industry. At its core, this requires placing innovation at the forefront and comprehensively strengthening the industry’s capabilities in independent innovation, integrated innovation, and the ability to introduce, digest, absorb, and re-innovate technologies, with a particular focus on breaking through bottlenecks in common, critical technologies.

Building an innovation system. The focus is on implementing a plan to enhance the packaging industry’s innovation capacity, guiding enterprises to establish mechanisms for investing in R&D and effectively strengthening their capabilities in original innovation and integrated innovation; optimizing the allocation of scientific and technological resources; actively fostering national-level technology innovation centers in the packaging sector; and prioritizing the establishment of a number of technology innovation alliances, collaborative innovation centers, and platforms for incubating scientific and technological achievements—along with platforms for promoting and applying research outcomes, providing public technical services, and facilitating technology and intellectual property transactions—focused on cutting-edge, common technologies that are critical to the industry. At the same time, by establishing science-and-technology collaboration networks spanning the upstream and downstream segments of the industrial chain, industrial collaborative innovation centers, and demonstration bases for industry–university–research cooperation, we will develop mechanisms for the joint cultivation and sharing of innovative talent.

Break through key technologies. Focusing on critical technologies in the fields of green packaging, safe packaging, and smart packaging, develop systematic technological solutions to foster the incubation, application, and dissemination of major scientific and technological achievements. Accelerate the establishment of a cloud-based packaging design database, with a strong emphasis on implementing reduction and eco-design principles, and vigorously advance the research, development, and application of technologies for the comprehensive recycling and utilization of packaging waste, thereby comprehensively elevating the level of green packaging application and innovation. Specifically address technical bottlenecks in the identification of harmful substances and the detection of their migration in food and pharmaceutical packaging, significantly enhancing the safety assurance capabilities of packaging for food, pharmaceuticals, and military products. Furthermore, emphasize the integration of packaging design with information technology to promote the intelligent transformation of production processes.

Strengthen demonstration applications. Implement the High-End Packaging Products Initiative by launching a number of major projects focused on design innovation, process optimization, and industrialization of packaging products; actively develop materials such as lightweight, high-strength paper, bio-based high-barrier plastics, corrosion-resistant ultra-thin metals, and lightweight, energy-efficient glass; and prioritize the development of personalized, customized, precision-engineered, and intelligent high-end packaging products. Implement the Packaging Industry Informatization Initiative by initiating major projects such as packaging big data and industrial cloud; promote key information technologies for packaging, including smart labels and smart terminals; and carry out integrated innovation and engineering application demonstrations that deeply integrate next-generation packaging informatization with industrialization. Implement the Intelligent Packaging Equipment Initiative by focusing on the development of major intelligent manufacturing turnkey systems, including automated packaging production lines for food and pharmaceuticals, integrated manufacturing equipment for packaging printing, and fully automated packaging systems for modern logistics; and vigorously advance demonstration applications of smart factories and digital workshops in the packaging industry.

Green Production: Building a Circular System

For the packaging industry, embracing green principles means fully implementing the overarching requirement in the 13th Five-Year Plan to “resolutely oppose excessive packaging” and achieving the specific goal outlined in the Guiding Opinions on the Transformation and Development of the Packaging Industry of shifting from traditional production to green production.

Develop green packaging materials, accelerate the independent R&D of green, high-performance packaging materials, create a portfolio of critical materials that fill domestic gaps, and break through bottlenecks in the application and industrialization of green and high-performance packaging materials. Conduct research to formulate relevant standards for green packaging materials, establish an environmental assessment system for material selection in packaging, promote the commercialization of scientific and technological achievements in green packaging materials, and progressively advance the goal of non-toxicity and harmlessness throughout the entire lifecycle of packaging. Advocate the use of single-material construction in packaging products and reduce the use of composite materials that are difficult to sort and recycle.

At the same time, leveraging biodegradable and recyclable materials as base substrates, we will develop a series of environmentally friendly food and pharmaceutical packaging materials that exhibit excellent compatibility with their contents, thereby enhancing the safety of such packaging. We will also achieve breakthroughs in low-carbon production technologies for industrial packaging materials, promote new packaging materials with superior comprehensive protective performance that are renewable and reusable, and strengthen the reliability of industrial packaging. In addition, we will foster deep integration between the military and civilian sectors in the packaging materials industry and advance the green transformation of packaging materials for specialized applications.

In addition, the packaging industry should promote simplified, reduced-quantity, reusable, and refined packaging design technologies; actively adopt green packaging materials that are high-quality, low in resource and energy consumption, minimally harmful to human health and the environment, and easy to recycle; intensify research and development of key green packaging materials, technologies, equipment, processes, and products; vigorously advance the application of environmentally friendly composite technologies such as solvent-free and water-based adhesives; advocate the use of advanced printing processes with low (or zero) VOC emissions, such as flexographic printing; and focus on developing and promoting technologies for the modification and remanufacturing of waste plastics, the recycling and reuse of waste (crushed) glass, the separation of composite materials like paper–aluminum–plastic laminates, as well as automated identification, sorting, and deinking of waste paper (and other materials such as metals and plastics), thereby advancing the circular utilization of packaging waste and driving the greening of enterprise production practices. To this end, efforts should be strengthened to build demonstration projects for green manufacturing enterprises and industrial parks, establish a number of demonstration bases for green transformation, and foster a group of leading, highly influential, and competitively advantaged key enterprises, large enterprise groups, and industrial clusters.