Global Flexible Packaging Market Expands Steadily: China's Industry Chain Takes Shape as Scale Production Accelerates

UK research firm Pira's latest report, 'Global Flexible Packaging Market Outlook 2018,' notes that the technical advantages of flexible packaging have reshaped the packaging landscape: industrial foods and products are no longer limited to a low-cost option, and flexible packaging has become a preferred choice for many consumer goods. Drawing on its material and format advantages, flexible packaging continues to penetrate markets once held by tin cans, glass, rigid plastic bottles, and cartons. The report projects the global flexible packaging market to grow 3.5% annually over the next five years, reaching USD 231 billion in output value by 2018.

Flexible packaging offers considerable market potential. Flexible packaging refers to packaging whose container shape can change after its contents are filled or removed. Common formats today include bags, boxes, sleeves, and wrappers made from paper, aluminum foil, fiber, plastic film, and their composite materials. Survey data shows that, thanks to its inherent advantages, flexible packaging has gradually captured market share from metal, cartons, and other packaging materials.

In recent years, rising output in food, beverages, dairy products, cosmetics, cleaning products, beer, and condiments has driven growing demand for flexible packaging based on plastics and plastic composites. As materials and processing technologies advance, plastic flexible packaging plays an increasingly important role across many sectors: shopping bags, retail bags, trash bags, and refrigerator storage bags have become part of daily life, while industrial goods, household products, apparel, and pharmaceutical packaging also rely heavily on plastic flexible packaging films.

Within the packaging sector, flexible packaging has become a key format for shelf sales thanks to vivid colors, versatile functions, and diverse presentation. Advances in China's flexible packaging industry have strongly supported the growth of food, daily chemical, and related sectors; their expansion in turn fuels demand for flexible packaging, giving the industry substantial market momentum. Authoritative forecasts indicate that the global flexible packaging market will grow at 3.5% annually over the next five years, with output value reaching USD 231 billion by 2018. As the world's second-largest packaging country, China naturally needs to keep pace with this development.

The level of domestic flexible packaging production lines has improved substantially. Flexible packaging began in China two decades ago, and the domestic industry has grown rapidly from a small base, showing an increasingly clear trend toward group-scale and large-scale operations. At present, mainland China alone has about 400 imported gravure flexible packaging lines and nearly 1,000 domestic wide-web high-speed gravure flexible packaging lines; their manufacturing standards have approached or reached those of developed countries.

Meanwhile, world-class printing companies are accelerating their China expansion through absolute controlling stakes, new wholly owned production enterprises and holding companies, and mergers and acquisitions of leading Chinese firms. For example, global packaging giant Amcor recently spent RMB 350 million to acquire the flexible packaging business of Jiangsu Shenda Group. As the packaging market with the greatest potential, China continues to attract foreign investment—presenting both opportunities and challenges for domestic flexible packaging color-printing enterprises.

In recent years, Chinese flexible packaging companies have closely tracked shifts in market demand, adjusted product structures in a timely manner, directed resources toward higher returns, and pursued product differentiation and structural diversification. High value-added products continue to emerge, with BOPP heat-shrink film, antistatic film, high-clarity film, retort-resistant film, transfer film, high-gloss film, ultra-thin film, and synthetic paper gradually achieving industrialization. New products such as BOPPT heat-resistant film, BOPPT in-line coated film, and BOPPT film with nanomaterials for imitation glass and bulletproof glass are becoming new trends for BOPPT film.

Moving toward green development is an important direction for flexible packaging. BOPP plastic film is a highly important flexible packaging material. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and non-toxic, and offers high tensile strength, impact strength, rigidity, toughness, and good transparency. However, it also faces issues such as static buildup, lack of heat-sealability, recycling difficulties, and susceptibility to contamination.

Under the pressure of the environmental movement, consumers are setting higher expectations for product packaging. The core meaning of green packaging is environmental protection, while also carrying the value of resource regeneration. In waste packaging recycling, a common principle is to minimize waste generation and encourage less raw material use while still meeting packaging functions. Packaging design should favor a single material or separable co-existing materials, and move toward simple structures that are easy to recycle and regenerate. Therefore, for plastic flexible packaging to achieve long-term growth, it must improve production technology and reduce raw material use. The key lies in developing new raw materials that lower environmental pollution from discarded products while improving production efficiency and cutting raw material input—for example, emerging barrier packaging materials.

Green packaging responds to the international environmental protection trend, represents the direction of packaging industries worldwide, and is one of the key elements for improving product market competitiveness and avoiding new trade barriers. China has already made notable progress in recycling plastic flexible packaging waste. High-strength metallocene polyolefins have successfully reduced overall packaging film thickness; the widespread adoption of coextrusion lamination technology and equipment has effectively addressed precise thickness control for each film layer. Even costly barrier layers can be made very thin, while freshness-preservation performance can improve several times or even dozens of times.

Summary: As market products adjust, the development trend for plastic flexible packaging films is clear, a survival-of-the-fittest market mechanism has begun to take shape, and small-scale, low-quality enterprises have largely exited the market. Consequently, many companies are accelerating large-scale production alongside product structure adjustments. Overall, China's flexible packaging industry has already formed its own basic industrial chain.

This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (news.pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-373749.html. Copyright belongs to the original author; provided for industry exchange and learning only.