With the improvement of the living standards of Chinese people and the booming development of tourism, leisure foods represented by puffed grains, fried nuts, fried potatoes, sugar, dried meat and fish, dried fruits and vegetables, and candies have been increasing at a rate 20% higher than the food market sales every year.

According to statistics, in 2010, the industrial output value of China's leisure food reached more than 200 billion yuan. In the future, the packaging demand for leisure food in China will continue to be strong, and the food packaging machinery industry has huge development potential.

Urbanization construction provides new opportunities for the packaging industry

With the rapid and healthy development of China's national economy, China's packaging industry has become an industry with great development potential and will certainly have broad market space. The national urbanization rate will increase from the current 39.1% to 60% by 2020. The annual average growth of urban residents nationwide will be 1%, increasing from the current 502 million to about 900 million by 2020; the number of urban agglomerations nationwide will increase from the current three major ones to more than a dozen, with a more reasonable distribution. Joseph Stiglitz, one of the Nobel Prize winners in Economics in 2001, ranked China's urbanization alongside the United States' high technology as two key factors in human development in the 21st century, and believed that urbanization is the foremost challenge and opportunity for China in the new century. The grand goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects—more developed economy, more sound democracy, more advanced science and education, more prosperous culture, more harmonious society, and better living standards for the people—as well as the people-oriented and coordinated development of people, economy, and society in the 21st century, have put forward higher requirements for the development of the packaging industry and brought new development opportunities.

With the continuous advancement of urbanization in China, the dairy and beverage industry has become one of the most growth-oriented industries in recent years. As people pay more attention to health, a variety of dairy beverage products and their supporting packaging products have emerged continuously. At the same time, aseptic filling technology, PET plastic bottle packaging for beer and milk, and other technologies are being increasingly favored and adopted by manufacturers.

Rapid increase in foreign demand

In addition to the attractive domestic market, the export market for Chinese products is also promising. After joining the WTO, the export value of China's main export products is expected to increase by about 8 to 10 billion US dollars annually. The increase in product export volume will inevitably drive the growth of corresponding product packaging.

Analysts from China Food Machinery Network introduced that the demand for food packaging machinery in foreign markets has also greatly increased: India, the world's second largest food producer, has a relatively small food industry scale. With the improvement of people's living standards, the demand for processed foods and fast convenience foods has increased, thus the demand for food packaging machinery and convenience food processing machinery is strong. Chinese food packaging machinery is very popular due to its good quality and low price.

Besides India, the United Arab Emirates also has a great need for Chinese packaging machinery and food machinery. The market potential here is huge and the prospects are promising. Chinese products, especially small and medium-sized packaging machinery and food processing machinery, are quite suitable for the market demand of the UAE and even the entire Middle East region. The reasons are: first, the packaging machinery manufacturing industry in the UAE has not truly started, but the market demand for packaging machinery is increasing day by day. Second, the UAE's industrial base is weak, and there is a national concept of valuing commerce over industry. This provides a rare opportunity and huge potential market for Chinese packaging and food processing machinery to enter the UAE market for product sales and manufacturing.

Increase independent research and development to approach the international market

A food machinery expert in Beijing believes that although the food packaging machinery industry has made great progress, the overall equipment level of China's food industry still lags behind developed countries. For example, some food packaging machinery has relatively low technological content, there are few products with independent intellectual property rights, the performance, reliability, quality, and service of domestic equipment do not meet user demands, and some high-end packaging machinery still relies on imports. These issues need to be addressed through technological and product innovation in the food packaging machinery industry.

Compared with developed countries, China's research on food packaging machinery started relatively late. The food packaging machinery industry in China has only formed for about twenty to thirty years. There is insufficient scientific research strength and a weak foundation in food packaging machinery R&D, which to some extent has slowed down the pace of the food and packaging industry. How to quickly improve the scientific research strength of food packaging machinery and catch up with the technological level of developed countries to seize this huge market is an urgent problem that China needs to solve.

A manager of a large food production enterprise in Beijing believes that regarding food sales packaging, the most commonly used and basic packaging processes now are mainly two types: filling and wrapping. Filling methods are almost applicable to all materials and various packaging containers. Specifically, for liquids, powders, and granular materials with good flowability, packaging is mainly completed relying on their own gravity, supplemented by certain mechanical means if necessary. For viscous semi-fluids or larger single or combined items, corresponding forced measures such as extrusion, pushing in, and picking up are required. As for wrapping methods, they differ; they are mainly suitable for single or combined items with regular shapes, sufficient rigidity and stiffness, and require tight packaging, mostly using flexible plastics and composite materials, wrapped with the help of mechanical action.

In the past decade or so, the international packaging industry has attached great importance to improving the general-purpose capability and multifunctional integration capability of packaging machinery and the entire packaging system, providing timely and flexible production means for the rapidly changing and diversified market products. At the same time, based on the practical needs of reasonable simplified packaging and advantageous packaging process methods, continuous exploration has significantly accelerated the pace of technological innovation, especially in sync with the development of modern automatic machine tools, gradually becoming clearer.

Enhance the development of complete sets of equipment to meet market demand

Analysts from China Food Machinery Network believe that for Chinese food packaging machinery enterprises to truly go global and occupy the international market, and to fully realize the huge potential of "Made in China," it is necessary to establish a new system of packaging machinery that is diversified, general-purpose, and multifunctionally integrated. The major issues of modularization and mechatronics must be focused on, which is undoubtedly an important development direction in the future.

However, compared with world powers, China has fewer product varieties and complete sets, mostly producing single machines, while foreign countries mostly produce complete sets. Single machine production and sales have thin profits and cannot achieve the high efficiency of complete set equipment sales. Moreover, product reliability is poor, technology updates slowly, and new technologies, new processes, and new materials are rarely applied.

China's food and packaging machinery mostly consists of single machines with few complete sets, many general-purpose models, and few devices meeting special requirements or for special materials. There are many low-tech products and few high-tech, high value-added, and high productivity products; intelligent equipment is still in the research and development stage.

With the acceleration of people's daily work pace, the enrichment of nutritional and health foods, and the enhancement of environmental protection awareness, many new requirements will inevitably be put forward for food and its packaging in the future. However, it should also be noted that China's food and packaging machinery has advantages: the technology is moderate, and the products are cost-effective, very suitable for the economic conditions of developing countries and regions. The export prospects to these countries and regions are broad, and some equipment can also be exported to developed countries.

The future development of China's food machinery still lies in the hands of many enterprises. With favorable government policy support, enterprises must firmly adhere to the above directions and follow a path of long-term development. I believe that in the near future, we will see new highlights in China's food machinery!