Environmental protection packaging materials generally include reusable and renewable packaging materials, edible packaging materials, degradable materials and natural paper materials. Environmental protection packaging is reflected in the saving of materials, the least waste and energy saving, easy recycling and reuse, and the packaging waste does not produce secondary pollution. Therefore, the selection of environmental protection packaging materials should comply with the basic principles of harmless, pollution-free and renewable utilization. Although pure natural environmental protection packaging materials are pollution-free, their commercial cost is high, which is also a serious waste of earth resources. Composite environmental protection materials will become the mainstream of environmental protection packaging in the future because of their low cost, no pollution and easy recycling.
According to the statistical data of the forecast report on the supply and demand development prospect and investment strategy of China's environmental protection packaging materials market from 2020 to 2026 released by CICC Qixin international consulting, the output value of the global packaging industry in 2018 was about 882.4 billion yuan, the proportion of environmental protection packaging materials in the whole packaging industry was about 35%, and the output value of the global environmental protection packaging materials industry in 2018 was 315 billion yuan. The overall output value of China's packaging industry increased from 148 billion yuan in 2014 to 23.3 billion yuan in 2018, with an average annual growth rate of about 12%. In the past few years, the contribution rate of the output value of the main sub industries in China's packaging industry to the overall packaging industry has been basically stable. With the rapid popularization of e-commerce online shopping, the express packaging industry has achieved a high-speed average annual growth of more than 50% in recent years. E-commerce drives the rise of express packaging industry, and the downstream packaging material industry driven by express has reached a scale of more than 50 billion yuan. More than 70% of the packaging comes from e-commerce sellers or platforms. At present, the packaging materials used in express delivery in China mainly include plastic bags, packaging boxes and woven bags. As an auxiliary packaging material, the demand for tape is also large. In 2018, the business volume of national express service enterprises totaled 50.71 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 26.6%, ranking first in the world. This is the fifth consecutive year since 2014.
From the perspective of packaging materials, the global packaging industry can be divided into paper packaging, plastic packaging, metal packaging, glass packaging and other packaging segments, of which paper packaging accounts for up to 39%, which is the most important packaging form in the global packaging industry. Compared with other packaging forms, paper packaging has the characteristics of easy degradation, easy recycling and reuse, so paper packaging has significant environmental protection characteristics. At present, paper packaging can be divided into hard paper packaging and soft paper packaging. Among them, hard paper packaging is mainly embodied in the form of carton, carton, paper barrel and other packaging forms, while soft paper packaging is embodied in the form of paper bag.
From the perspective of downstream application, paper bag packaging is mainly used in industrial products, food and beverage consumption, personal care and household consumption. At present, valve bags, square bottom bags, heat sealing bags, sewn bottom bags and other products are mainly used in the packaging field of industrial products.
Urgent demand of packaging industry
As more and more consumers start online shopping, packaging will play an important role in the brand and consumers' e-commerce experience. Online shopping is becoming more and more popular all over the world. In developed countries, 91% of consumers will choose online shopping. The main reason why online shopping is popular is convenience. More than half of Chinese consumers aged 20-49 say online shopping is fast and time-saving. Now is the time for brands to consider how to reduce packaging. If this disadvantage is not eliminated, consumers will lose interest in over packaged brand goods and even their corresponding brand goods sold online and delivered through e-commerce. By 2020, the global e-commerce sales are expected to reach US $4 trillion, accounting for nearly 15% of the total global retail sales. Brands must consider when to enter the online retail and e-commerce packaging market. The safe delivery of products through the e-commerce supply chain is only one part of packaging that should be considered. In addition, packaging should also optimize materials and improve sustainability.
（1） Policy encouragement and support bring a good policy environment to the industry
The support of national policies will bring long-term encouragement and support to the environmental protection packaging material industry, The state has successively issued industrial revitalization policies such as the special action plan for the deep integration of informatization and industrialization (2013-2018), the opinions of the State Council on accelerating the development of energy conservation and environmental protection industry and made in China 2025, which will help China optimize the industrial structure, improve the automation level of manufacturing industry, enhance the industrial supporting capacity and promote the technology of environmental protection packaging materials industry.
In addition, the state has successively revised the Cleaner Production Promotion Law of the people's Republic of China, the environmental protection law of the people's Republic of China and other laws and regulations to further clarify the mandatory requirements for industrial environmental protection paper packaging in environmental protection, which is conducive to the further growth of market demand of the industry.
（2） The trend of energy conservation, environmental protection and industrial automation will create a huge new market for the industry
With the sustainable development of China's national economy, economic structure adjustment and the overall transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry have become an important topic for China's macroeconomic development. Under this trend, environmentally friendly, energy-saving and consumption reduction, environmentally friendly materials and automatic production lines that fit the automatic packaging process will usher in good development opportunities. The data show that only at present, the special mortar in the field of building materials adopts environmental protection paper bags suitable for automatic filling to replace the plastic packaging, fiber packaging, sack packaging and other product packaging suitable for manual filling, which will add up to 25 billion yuan of market space for environmental protection paper packaging. If the substitution effect of further packaging upgrading in the fields of chemical industry, food and medicine is considered, the deepening trend of energy conservation, environmental protection and industrial automation will create a huge new market for the industry.
（3） The transfer of global industries to China has brought new development opportunities for the development of the industry
China has a large population and rich labor resources. Compared with European and American developed countries, the labor production cost is low, and the trend of global manufacturing industry transferring to China is increasing. With the establishment of the status of "world factory", China is gradually changing from a large manufacturing country to a powerful manufacturing country. The environmental protection packaging material industry is a typical downstream driven industry. With the acceleration of the localization process of foreign enterprises, the demand for high-end packaging will also increase. As foreign enterprises have extremely strict requirements on product quality, they will also choose environmental protection packaging in the process of localized production. If they choose to import from abroad, there will be problems such as long arrival time, difficult guarantee of delivery timeliness and high cost. Then domestic high-end environmental protection manufacturers that can meet their stringent quality requirements will become their best choice.
（4） The division of labor and cooperation between enterprises in the industry and downstream customers are deepening day by day
Industrial environmental protection packaging material products have very obvious customized design and production characteristics. For example, in different downstream fields, there are different differentiated requirements for the physicochemical characteristics of powder particles to be packaged, customer packaging process flow and downstream application environment of final products. Driven by the tide of economic globalization, more and more downstream customers choose the mode of industrial division of labor, hand over the overall solution of professional product packaging to the enterprises in the industry, and concentrate on strengthening their core competitiveness and expanding their business scope. Therefore, the division of labor and cooperation between professional environmental protection packaging material enterprises with good technical reserves and comprehensive value-added services and downstream customers has become increasingly fine and close, which has driven the sustainable development of the industry.
（5） Impact of downstream industries on environmental protection packaging materials industry
Environmental protection packaging materials are widely used in the automatic packaging field of various powder and particle products such as chemical industry, building materials industry, food industry, food additive industry and pharmaceutical industry. The broad development prospect of downstream industries and the growth of packaging supporting demand provide good preconditions for the rapid development of the industry. In addition, with the rapid development of downstream industries, new products and technologies emerge one after another. For enterprises in the industry, opportunities and challenges coexist. High quality enterprises with strong product design ability, technical R & D strength, advanced production equipment and good service guarantee will gradually win market opportunities, affecting the future competition pattern and development direction of the industry.
China is the world's second largest packaging country after the United States. The packaging industry ranks 14th among China's 38 major industrial categories and is an important part of China's manufacturing system. In terms of total amount, China has become a big packaging country in the world, but there is a big gap with developed countries in terms of variety, quality, new product R & D capacity and economic benefits.
