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Development Status of Plastic Packaging Industry in China

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Author : Guangzhou Lefeng Plastic Bags Co.,Ltd
Update time : 2022-12-21 17:25:31
1, plastic packaging industry chain analysis: mature development

Plastic packaging has had a longer time development history in our country, and has formed a more mature industry chain. The industrial chain of plastic packaging can be divided into three parts. The upstream is the supplier of plastic packaging raw materials, mainly responsible for the provision of general plastic packaging raw materials, plastic additives and special equipment for plastic processing. Most enterprises are plastic products enterprises, and the industry is mainly price-determined.

The middle part is the manufacturing of plastic packaging. Plastic packaging products can be divided into hard packaging and flexible packaging. Hard packaging mainly refers to plastic products such as plastic drums, plastic bottles and plastic caps, while flexible packaging mainly refers to plastic hoses and plastic bags.

Plastic packaging downstream is the application industry of plastic packaging, plastic packaging in our country has a wide range of application industries, including beverage manufacturing, food manufacturing, pharmaceutical manufacturing, daily chemical products manufacturing and cooking oil manufacturing.

According to the function of plastic packaging can be divided into transport packaging, storage packaging, collection packaging, protection packaging, sales packaging; According to the degree of use can be divided into disposable packaging, reuse packaging (recycling packaging); According to the packaging object can be divided into food packaging, medicine packaging, textile packaging, liquid packaging, powder packaging, equipment packaging, dangerous goods packaging, etc.

According to the use department can be divided into military needs packaging, civilian packaging, special needs packaging, etc. According to the form of plastic packaging materials, it can be divided into plastic film, hollow containers (bottles, cans), plastic boxes, woven bags, plastic bags, foam plastics, etc.


2. Analysis on the market size of China's plastic packaging industry: the revenue increases year by year

From 2017 to 2019, the main business income of enterprises above designated size in the plastic packaging industry maintained a growing trend. In 2019, the main business income of enterprises above designated size in the plastic packaging industry reached 66.678 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.48%.

3. Upstream analysis of China's plastic packaging industry chain: Fierce market competition

The upstream industry of plastic packaging is mainly a provider of synthetic resins and plastic additives. Plastics industry has a long history in our country, there are a large number of enterprises in the industry, the degree of competition incentive, there is also product structure and quality competition and the price competition of the low-end product, in addition to special demand, plastics packaging uses plastics raw materials in the position of low-end plastics products, many enterprises to provide materials, and lay a good foundation for our plastics packaging industry.

1) Synthetic resin industry

On the supply side, China's synthetic resin output maintained a relatively fast growth rate from 2011 to 2019. China produced 95.741,000 tons of synthetic resin in 2019, up 9.3 percent year on year, according to the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry League.  


The change of consumption of synthetic resin directly affects the development and trend of downstream plastic processing industry. The analysis of plastic apparent consumption can be helpful to the future planning, situation analysis and policy making of plastic processing industry. In 2019, the apparent consumption of synthetic resin was about 122,865,800 tons, up 10.33% year on year.

2) Plastic additive industry

Statistics from China Plastic Processing Industry Association show that in the first three quarters of 2019, the consumption of plastic additives in China is about 6 million tons, including nearly 3 million tons of plasticizer, 500,000 tons of heat stabilizer, 400,000 tons of flame retardant, 400,000 tons of impact modifier and processing additives, 160,000 tons of foaming agent and 200,000 tons of lubricant. Antioxidant 200,000 tons, light stabilizer 45,000 tons, coupling agent, antistatic agent have been improved. Plasticizer and heat stabilizer of environmental protection products increased rapidly, non-environmental protection products showed a shrinking trend, other varieties were flat.

3) Special equipment industry for plastic processing

The output of special equipment for plastic processing has fluctuated from 2015 to 2019. From January to December 2019, China produced 380,500 units of special equipment for plastic processing, of which 28,200 units were produced in December, up 12.9 percent year on year.


4, plastic packaging industry chain downstream analysis: the product is widely used

The downstream industries of plastic flexible packaging industry include soft drinks manufacturing industry, edible oil industry, pharmaceutical industry, daily chemical industry, food manufacturing industry, etc. The downstream manufacturing customers purchase plastic packaging materials for production turnover or sales circulation, which are essentially sold to the end consumers.

1) The soft drinks industry

Currently, there are several main types of plastics used in beverage packaging:

One is polyethylene (PE), the world's largest volume of synthetic resin and the largest consumption of plastic packaging material;

The second is polyvinyl chloride (PVC), PVC can be roughly divided into hard products, soft products and paste products three categories;

Third, polypropylene (PP), because of its high transparency, smooth, good processing, and other materials can be made of a variety of beverage packaging containers.

Four is polyester (PET or PETP), the PET bottle produced by two axis extension blow molding method, has good transparency, high surface gloss, glass appearance, is the most suitable plastic bottle instead of glass bottle;

Fifth, polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC), this material is characterized by softness and has very low permeability, water permeability, preservation, fragrance performance is good, is a better heat shrink packaging material.

Along with the rapid growth of Chinese economy and the continuous improvement of urban and rural consumers' income level and consumption power, the consumption demand of soft drinks is always in the relatively fast growth stage. After experiencing many industrial waves such as carbonated beverage, bottled water, tea beverage, fruit juice, herbal tea and milk beverage, the development of Chinese soft drink industry has entered the stage of "new normal".

The volume of soft drink fluctuated from 2015 to 2019. The country's soft drink output in 2019 was 177,634,800 tons, up 13.29 percent year on year. The output of soft drinks in China from January to June of 2020 was 77,877,000 tons, down 10.5% year on year.

2) Edible oil industry

At present, the packaging materials of edible oil are mainly glass, PET, PE, edible PVC and tinplate and so on. There are many kinds of packaging materials. Because edible oil has strict requirements on the strength, transparency and permeability of packaging containers, polyester (PET) bottles and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) bottles are the mainstream applications of edible oil at present. These two materials have good airtight performance, moderate price, and are the most widely used.

Edible vegetable oil is a kind of edible oil, that is, the edible oil products made by pressing and refining the oil-bearing part of plant oil crops.

The industrial chain of edible vegetable oil mainly includes the cultivation, pressing, refining, packaging and channel sales of oil crops. In recent years, with the diversification of consumption and the emergence of new edible oils, small oils have become the category of fast growth. Corn oil, sunflower oil, camellia oil are more and more consumers choose.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China produced 54.218,000 tons of edible vegetable oil in 2019, up 7.02 percent year on year. From January to July 2020, the output of edible vegetable oil in China was 29.593 million tons, down 1.1% year-on-year.

3) The pharmaceutical industry

Chinese medicine tablets, powder, capsules, pills and other types of packaging, mainly experienced from paper bags, simple plastic bags, glass bottles to high-quality aluminum plastic blister packaging and plastic film composite packaging progress, the quality of pharmaceutical packaging has fundamentally changed.

Blister package of drugs includes pharmaceutical aluminum foil, PVC plastic hard sheet, heat sealing coating and other materials. Choose PVC, PVDC or composite material PVC/PVDC, PVC/PVDC/PE, etc. And powder, granules usually use SP film composite bag packaging, it uses a variety of plastic film composite (such as BOPP/PET, OPA/PT) or aluminum-plastic composite film (such as PT/AL/PE, PET/AL/PE), aluminum-plastic composite film aluminum foil and plastic film with adhesive laminated composite. It is composed of basic layer, printing layer, high barrier layer and sealing layer. Typical basic material is PET and cellophane with PVDC coating. Typical high barrier material is soft aluminum foil or PVDC.

From the perspective of product output changes in the pharmaceutical industry, the output of chemical active drugs and Chinese patent drugs both increased first and then decreased during 2016-2019. In 2019, the output of active chemical drugs and Chinese patent medicine decreased to 2.621 million tons and 2.464 million tons, respectively


5. Market competition pattern analysis of China's plastic packaging industry: low market concentration

The market concentration of plastics packaging industry in our country is very low, and the competition of plastics flexible packaging industry is fierce. In addition, many domestic factories are large and small, and enterprises also face the competition of transnational peer.

Our plastic packaging industry can be generally divided into four echelons:

The first echelon is the leading enterprises, mainly including Yongxin Shares, Amco (China), Zijiang Enterprises, etc., the business income is more than 2 billion yuan, and the business of plastic packaging related plate is more than 2 billion yuan;

The second tier is the main competitors in the industry, mainly including Tongzhong Lixing, Wang Zixin Material, Zhuhai Zhongfu and other enterprises with revenue of more than 1 billion yuan, and plastic packaging related enterprises with revenue of more than 500 million yuan;

The third tier is the backbone of the industry, mainly composed of large and medium-sized enterprises such as Nanfang Packaging, Plas Packaging, Hongyu Packaging Materials and Haishun New Materials. The number of enterprises in this tier is the largest, and new leading enterprises are more likely to emerge.

The fourth echelon for the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises, products tend to low-end, small scale, weak competitiveness.


6. Development prospect analysis of China's plastic packaging industry: Transition to green

As plastic products are difficult to degrade, recycling is not high degree, great pollution to the environment, the country has gradually restricted the use of plastic packaging. But with the improvement of people's living standards, the scale of downstream demand for packaging will continue to expand, coupled with the transformation of plastic packaging industry products to green. Overall, Chinese plastic packaging industry scale will maintain a small stable growth trend.
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