Pharmaceutical, Food and Daily Chemical Demand Fuels Flexible Packaging Market Momentum

In recent years, China's flexible packaging industry has made continuous progress, driving growth in downstream sectors such as pharmaceuticals, food and daily chemicals. At the same time, development in pharmaceuticals and other industries has in turn expanded demand for flexible packaging, injecting huge market momentum into the flexible packaging sector.

Flexible packaging is packaging whose container shape can change. Today's market mainly includes various bags, boxes, sleeves and wraps made from paper, aluminum foil, fiber, plastic film and their composites. In the packaging industry, flexible packaging refers to packaging that can adapt in form after filling or removing contents. With vivid colors, rich functions and diverse forms of expression, it has become one of the most important packaging formats for shelf sales. Authoritative institutions forecast that over the next five years the global flexible packaging market will grow at an annual rate of 3.5%, with output value expected to reach USD 231 billion by 2018. As the world's second largest packaging country, China naturally needs to keep pace with this development.

China's flexible packaging industry has grown from small to large and developed rapidly, having started in China 20 years ago. It shows a clear trend toward group-scale and large-scale operations. At present, mainland China alone has about 400 imported gravure flexible packaging production lines and nearly 1,000 domestic wide-format high-speed gravure flexible packaging production lines, whose manufacturing level has approached or reached that of developed countries. Meanwhile, world-class printing companies are accelerating their development in China through absolute controlling stakes, new wholly owned production enterprises and holding companies, and mergers and acquisitions of leading Chinese enterprises. For example, Amcor, a global packaging giant, spent RMB 350 million to acquire the flexible packaging business of Jiangsu Shenda Group. As the packaging market with the greatest potential, China will naturally attract foreign investment, which means both opportunities and challenges for China's flexible color-printing enterprises.

Like other packaging, flexible packaging must consider the three elements of packaging: safety, convenience and aesthetics (display and promotion). After more than 20 years of development, China's flexible packaging industry has made great progress, especially in aesthetics, where it has reached a world-leading level. However, in terms of safety, China's flexible packaging industry still has certain problems and needs continuous effort.

Flexible packaging enterprises must keep up with changes in market demand, adjust their product structure in a timely manner, direct resources toward efficiency, and achieve product differentiation. At the same time, they should pay more attention to new business concepts such as energy saving, consumption reduction, emission reduction and safety, prompting more flexible packaging enterprises to gradually move toward standardized operations.

This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (news.pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-373095.html. All rights belong to the original author; this article is for industry exchange and learning only.