In recent years, China's food equipment and packaging machinery industry has maintained a good overall development trend. The average growth rate of the industry is higher than the overall growth rate of the national machinery industry. The industry scale, industrial structure, product level, international competitiveness and other aspects have been significantly improved. However, there are still development bottlenecks in the industry, such as low-end overcapacity, weak R&D and independent innovation capabilities of high-end core technologies, and insufficient supply of high-level complete sets of equipment. Industry insiders suggested that smart packaging equipment should be vigorously developed to improve the overall competitiveness of the packaging machinery industry. At the same time, with the rapid development of China's packaging machinery industry, it will become a trend for domestic food packaging machinery to replace imports.

The import substitution effect of packaging machinery

After more than 20 years of development, China's packaging machinery has become one of the top ten industries in the machinery industry, providing a strong guarantee for the rapid development of the packaging industry. According to the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" for the development of China's food and packaging machinery industry, the total output value of enterprises above designated size in China's food and packaging machinery industry will reach 150 billion yuan in 2025, with an annual compound growth rate of about 8%, and the export value will reach 12 billion dollars in 2025. The international competitiveness will be significantly improved.

The rapid development of packaging machinery benefits from the rapid growth of China's macro-economy in the past decade. According to the statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, China's GDP will reach 114.9 trillion yuan in 2021, with an increase rate of 8.4% over the previous year. It will become one of the centers promoting global economic growth and one of the largest consumer markets in the world.

The healthy, stable and rapid development of the whole macro-economy, as well as a number of industrial adjustment and revitalization development plans issued by the state, have enabled most industries in the national economy to achieve steady growth. The rapid development of many downstream industries, including tea and other industries, has led to the rapid growth of China's packaging machinery industry.

With China's increasingly prominent position and role in the global economic structure, these downstream industries will continue to drive the packaging machinery industry to achieve greater development in business model, product structure, technology research and development, production and manufacturing, and will also provide a broader market space for the packaging machinery industry.

At the early stage of development, there is a big gap between China's packaging machinery industry and developed countries in terms of research and development, design, production and technology. Internationally renowned packaging equipment enterprises, represented by Germany's Krones and Germany's Bosch, have occupied the leading position in the world's packaging machinery market and the main share of China's high-end packaging equipment market by providing large, complete sets of high-precision stand-alone equipment and intelligent packaging production lines.

In recent years, with the support of the national industrial policy and the good situation of the downstream industry, some enterprises have gradually improved their product categories through independent innovation, introduction and absorption of foreign advanced technologies, and the technical level has been greatly improved. At present, the overall technical level of China's packaging machinery industry has reached the international middle and upper level, and some technologies have reached the international advanced level.

The improvement of the technical level of domestic packaging machinery has enhanced the international competitiveness of domestic packaging machinery and equipment, created conditions for China's export of packaging machinery and equipment, and changed the situation that China's high-end packaging equipment has long been dependent on imports, and exported to Germany, the United States, Italy and other machinery manufacturing powers. According to the data, from January to October 2022, the number of Chinese packaging machinery imports was 44551, a decrease of 31137 compared with the same period in 2021, a year-on-year decrease of 39.3%; The import amount was 1432032 million US dollars, a decrease of 137918 million US dollars compared with the same period in 2021, a year-on-year decrease of 8.8%, and the import substitution effect began to show.

With the advantages of controlling manufacturing costs, localized services and logistics, domestic equipment will gradually narrow the gap with internationally renowned enterprises, and domestic food packaging machinery will become a trend to replace imports.

Breakthrough "siege" from smart packaging equipment

Domestic brands have relied on foreign imports for a long time in the past, and their R&D capabilities are weak in intelligent numerical control systems, electromechanical integration design, precision parts finishing, steel materials, etc. Domestic brands have gradually risen in recent years, and are still in the initial stage of domestic equipment replacement. According to statistics, more than 80% of the domestic food and packaging equipment industry are small and medium-sized enterprises, and there are many problems in the industry, such as fewer high-starting enterprises, more low-level repetitive construction, weak comprehensive competitiveness, and lack of product monopoly. The packaging equipment industry is like a huge "siege" - nearly 15% of enterprises in the industry change production or close down every year, but another 15% join.

With the further improvement of downstream enterprises' requirements for the flexibility, intelligence and efficiency of packaging equipment, only a few enterprises with strong R&D capabilities and technology accumulation, brand advantages and scale advantages can obtain relatively high profit margins and continuously develop new products for the market; On the contrary, smaller packaging equipment enterprises may be eliminated or merged. Now, the Matthew effect has begun to appear in the back-end packaging segmentation fields of dairy products, beer, beverage and other industries, that is, one or two enterprises become the benchmark in the segmentation field and have the voice of the industry.

At present, most of the large equipment manufacturing enterprises are foreign-funded companies, and China's equipment manufacturing enterprises are under great pressure in the fierce competitive environment. Industry insiders suggested that in recent years, developing countries have developed rapidly and need to import advanced equipment and technology from other countries to make up for their own manufacturing gap. Therefore, overseas markets, especially those of developing countries, will become a huge market for China's packaging machinery export in a long period of time in the future. In addition, the labor cost of developed countries such as the United States is getting higher and higher, and the profit of some products imported will be higher than their own production, so the market prospect of packaging machinery exported to developed countries is also relatively broad.

Affected by the intense market competition in the downstream industry, the scale and intensive production form, and the rising cost of human resources and other factors, packaging equipment plays an increasingly important role in the production and logistics links, and highly automated, efficient, intelligent and energy-saving packaging equipment is favored by the downstream industry. Industry insiders believe that fully automatic, unmanned and integrated packaging equipment is at a good time for vigorous development, and packaging machinery will continue to improve the overall competitiveness of intelligent packaging equipment in line with the trend of industrial automation.