From Circular Packaging to Packaging Circularity: How Xiangxiang Gongyong Uses Smart Services to Tackle Single-Use Logistics Packaging

The circular economy has become a critical route for the packaging industry's transformation, while packaging itself is both a key part of green supply chain development and an important carrier for green industrial upgrading.

Fresh figures from Frost & Sullivan show that the global circular packaging industry was worth USD 100.1 billion in 2021. China's logistics packaging market stood at about RMB 760 billion, with single-use logistics packaging accounting for more than 90%. As China moves from manufacturing toward intelligent manufacturing, and as supply-driven demand gives way to manufacturing ESG demand, digitally enabled green packaging and zero-carbon circular service models are redefining industry rules and the industrial value chain, opening historic growth opportunities.

Liao Qingxin, founder and CEO of Xiangxiang Gongyong, said in an interview that China is the world's manufacturing center with the largest industrial scale, the most complete industrial categories and the most complete industrial system. Building a large industrial packaging circulation system for manufacturing requires standardized, digital, networked and platform-based industrial support. It also depends on advanced circular packaging capacity, circular operation networks, packaging asset pools, and coordinated logistics, warehousing, IoT and digital infrastructure. If China's industrial logistics packaging were converted from single-use to circular and shared use across society, he noted, at least RMB 5 trillion in new investment would be needed. With dual-carbon goals and ESG reinforcing each other, China's industrial packaging is accelerating toward recyclability, while policy support is nurturing a trillion-yuan packaging circular service market.

Xiangxiang Gongyong: using smart packaging technology and circular services to break the single-use logistics packaging deadlock

Founded in 2013, Xiangxiang Gongyong is a platform-based technology company that supplies smart packaging technology and circular services to global industrial manufacturing. It mainly offers packaging circulation and sharing solutions for bulk liquids, fresh food cold chain, chemicals, new energy vehicles, postal and express delivery, and other boundary-free industries.

Drawing on comprehensive R&D capabilities in cross-industry logistics packaging, IoT and circular management, together with 5G, big data and AI-assisted decision-making, the company has developed a nationwide intelligent, grid-based operation network. This supports an integrated green supply chain solution combining packaging, services and data.

Liao Qingxin told 36Kr that Xiangxiang Gongyong thinks in terms of future industrial city development, with a focus on building whole-industry-chain strengths in industrial circular packaging. In segments such as liquid packaging for non-chemicals, food and beverage and personal care, as well as transport packaging for automotive and home appliance parts, the company has whole-chain capabilities in R&D, patent portfolio, advanced manufacturing and operational management.

On the industrial packaging product side, Xiangxiang Gongyong develops reusable packaging solutions in different sizes and functions for different transport scenarios. Its current focus covers three major scenarios: bulk liquids, automotive and home appliance parts, and fresh food cold chain.

One example is its bulk liquid circular service solution, Blue-Green Dual Circulation, which gives liquid industry users a choice between Blue Circulation and Green Circulation. To address pain points in non-hazardous chemical sectors such as polyurethane, acrylic emulsion, epoxy resin, lubricants and inks, Xiangxiang Gongyong combines plastic foldable bag-in-box technology with a safe and environmentally friendly Blue Circulation service. It features innovations including four-layer leak protection, bottom discharge via ball valve, anti-crystallization, anti-solidification and anti-separation, and can match automatic filling lines and container rail-water intermodal transport.

For food and personal care industry pain points in juice, jam, dairy, condiments, edible oil, syrup and cosmetics, Xiangxiang Gongyong offers a clean and hygienic Green Circulation service. The container has a large capacity of about 1,250 liters and uses FDA-grade plastic material and a double-smooth structure. It is compatible with a zero-residue extruder and a high-temperature sterilization discharge valve, addressing traditional single-use packaging problems such as moisture susceptibility, rust, mold, high discharge residue, inconvenient operation and maintenance, high cost and high waste.

In digital platform services, Xiangxiang Gongyong has launched a container-use PaaS platform and a container-management SaaS platform.

The container-use PaaS (Packaging as a Service) offering deeply integrates digital technology with the circular packaging service network. Under a packaging-as-a-service model, it provides standardized smart logistics packaging use services to upstream and downstream supply chain companies. Users can access the service through the platform, mobile devices, WeChat service accounts and other channels.

The container-management SaaS service is based on IoT, algorithms and big data. It helps asset managers fully understand asset operations and effectively control three core areas: asset management, early-warning monitoring and efficiency optimization. Users can monitor logistics packaging location, movement trajectory, current status (in transit, in warehouse, empty, full, lost, idle, etc.), site inbound/outbound and inventory, temperature and other customized sensor data in real time. This enables full life-cycle management from production to recovery, covering the entire chain: collection, loading, warehousing, outbound, transit, transfer, unloading, cleaning and maintenance.

On this basis, Xiangxiang Gongyong provides customers with full life-cycle carbon management services, including circular packaging carbon footprint and carbon emission reduction accounting. It shares product carbon footprint life-cycle assessment and circular service carbon reduction data with customers, helping to solve data collection challenges for logistics packaging carbon footprint and carbon accounting.

It is understood that Xiangxiang Gongyong's operation and service network now covers most parts of China. Around core industrial economic belts, it has deployed 30 central warehouses and 2,500 upstream and downstream sites, and has invested 2 million smart circular packaging assets.

How can industrial circular packaging support industrial transformation and upgrading? Xiangxiang Gongyong's founder and CEO shares his views

To answer this question, one point must be clear: moving from circular packaging to packaging circularity is not simply a one-time replacement exercise. It is a lever for improving supply chain efficiency in a new development cycle.

Packaging is one of the few tools that accompanies a product throughout its life cycle, connecting production on one side and consumption on the other. Companies represented by Xiangxiang Gongyong embody three ideas: standardization, circularity and sharing, which form a progressive relationship.

Zuo Xinyu, secretary general of the Logistics Equipment Professional Committee of the China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing, summarized the key role of circular packaging as a typical efficiency tool, decarbonization tool, digitalization tool, automation tool and cost tool.

What Xiangxiang Gongyong is doing is using technology upgrades, digital applications and integrated hardware-software innovation to combine massive, fragmented packaging information into usable applications. In this way, it is developing a replicable and scalable business model for circular development and green transformation in the packaging industry.

At the 'Green New Momentum, ESG New Track' 2023 Zero-Carbon Circular Industry Innovation Forum held on June 11, Liao Qingxin, founder and CEO of Xiangxiang Gongyong, shared views based on more than a decade of industrial practice.

Liao Qingxin believes the first point is that the industrial foundation must be made 'heavy'.

Today, user expectations for circular packaging have moved up from 'circular packaging' to 'packaging circularity'. This requires the circular packaging industry to accelerate its shift from secondary-sector manufacturing to tertiary-sector production-oriented services.

To achieve this, two tasks are essential: first, build dedicated solutions around specific industries; second, advance the construction of a circular service network for circular packaging.

The second point is that the business model must be made 'light'.

The circular economy is a major undertaking that requires participation from both industry and capital.

Zhongguancun Science and Technology Leasing, which led Xiangxiang Gongyong's Series D financing, is a listed platform under Zhongguancun Development Group. He Rongfeng, executive director and general manager of Zhongguancun Science and Technology Leasing and director of Zhongnuo Fund, explained why it invested in Xiangxiang Gongyong.

He noted that industrial development cannot be separated from financial support. A single technological innovation is not enough to raise the overall level of an industry. Only by combining technological innovation with financial innovation, and aligning professional R&D companies with professional financial capital, can multi-scenario solutions be created. The cooperation between Zhongguancun Science and Technology Leasing and Xiangxiang Gongyong is both an exploration of using financial innovation to drive change in the circular packaging industry and an active effort to support zero-carbon circularity through industry-finance integration.

The third point is that green overseas expansion must be made 'strong'.

The green track not only gives technology-innovation companies a new entrepreneurial opening, but also provides an important opportunity for Chinese industries to go global and build global influence.

Because competitors are on the same starting line, Chinese companies can rebuild systems through patents, standards, advanced processes and digital technologies, achieving a 'lane change and overtaking'. New energy vehicles are the best example.

On the green track, Chinese companies have every possibility to become rule makers and leaders in technology and markets, rather than merely followers.

—This article is reposted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn); original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-379402.html