Growth rate of China's packaging sector at 37.2%

The prosperity index of equipment manufacturing industry from China Economic Monitoring Center indicated that after the seasonal adjustment, the growth rate of packaging equipments in Q3 reached 37.2 percent year on year, remaining at a high level in spite of an outstanding drop from the last quarter.

The packaging industry in China experienced a late but rapid development. The total output value of the packaging industry across the country has increased to more than RMB200 billion yuan today from less than RMB10 billion yuan in 1991. The industry every year provides packing for industrial products, agricultural products and food products valuing several trillion yuan, thus plays an important role in the national economy. According to statistics, the proportion of China's food packaging machinery, which directly serves the food industry, is as high as 80 percent.

However, behind the rapid development of China's packaging industry, there are still quite a lot of problems. For example, the export value of the packaging machinery is less than 5 percent of the total output value, while the import value is almost equal to the total output value. Compared with the foreign products, domestic packaging machinery still drops behind them far away in terms of technical level, and can not meet the demands of domestic market. Take the plastic film two-way stretch equipment as an example, the value per production line is about RMB100 million yuan, and by now, China has imported 110 such lines from the 70s of last century.

In terms of product structure, there are more than 1,300 kinds of packaging machineries in China, but they are lacking in high-tech, high-precision and high-quality complementary products, resulting in the poor performance, stability and reliability of products. In terms of enterprises' status, there is a lack of leading enterprises in the packing industry, and the enterprises of high level of technology, large scale of production and product quality that meets international standards are rarely seen. In terms of product research and development, China's products are still remaining in the test and imitation stage without strong self-development capability and enough researching investment. Compared with the R&D investment of 8 percent to 10 percent of the sales value in developed countries, China's investment is only 1 percent.