Packaging machinery refers to machinery that can complete all or part of the product and commodity packaging process. The packaging process includes the main processes such as filling, wrapping, and sealing, as well as related pre- and post-processes, such as cleaning, stacking, and disassembly. In addition, packaging also includes processes such as metering or stamping on the package. The use of mechanical packaging products can increase productivity, reduce labor intensity, meet the needs of large-scale production, and meet the requirements of sanitation.

The development of packaging machinery provides the necessary guarantee for the modern processing and mass production of food and medicine. Due to the particularity of drug production, drug packaging from materials to packaging methods, from environmental requirements to label processing, is more stringent than food packaging, and the restrictions are more stringent. This makes pharmaceutical packaging machinery develop into a relatively independent machinery industry.

Small and scattered situation to be broken

From a broad perspective, after the founding of New China, my country's basic packaging machinery industry began to take off. After more than half a century of development, there is still a big gap with the international advanced level. Among them, only corrugated box packaging machinery and some small packaging machines occupy a certain scale and advantage in China. In addition, some high-tech packaging equipment still needs to rely on imports.

According to statistics, the output of packaging machinery in my country reached 670,000 units (sets) in 2005 and will increase to 930,000 units (sets) by 2010. At present, my country's packaging machinery has become one of the top ten industries in the machinery industry. However, my country's packaging machinery exports are less than 5% of the industry's total output value, while imports are roughly equivalent to the total output value.

Take a set of data of my country's packaging machinery import and export from April to August 2006 as an example. During this period of time, my country exported 5,481 container washing or drying equipment, with a total export value of US$482,793; although there were only 345 similar equipment imported, the total import value was as high as US$10,571,652. Encapsulation, labeling, and filling machines are the product categories with relatively large export volume in my country. In 4 months, a total of 488,056 units were exported, with a total export value of 11,064,972 US dollars; only 2878 units of similar equipment were imported, but the total import volume has also reached US$44,000,035. 65,324 filling machines and packaging machines were exported, totaling USD 25,350,635; 566 imported, totaling 39,213,071 units.

From this set of data, it can be seen that the average price of a single unit (set) of imported equipment is US$24751.8, and the imports are mainly concentrated in developed countries such as Europe, America and Japan; the average price of a single set of my country’s exports is 66.02 yuan, and the export destinations are mainly concentrated in Africa and Middle East and other places. Although the total number of exported equipment in my country is 558,861 sets, and only 3789 sets are imported, the average price of imported sets is 678 times the average price of exported sets. This shows that my country's export structure is "small and scattered", with single products as the main part; while imports are mostly complete sets or large-scale equipment. It can be seen that my country's current packaging machinery exports and imports are far from foreign products in terms of product quality, quantity or technical content.

From the perspective of product structure, there are about 1,300 kinds of packaging machinery in my country, with a small number of supporting products, lack of high precision and large-scale products, and cannot meet market demand: product quality gaps are manifested in product stability and reliability, poor appearance and appearance Rough handling, poor quality of many components, short life span, and low reliability have affected the quality of the overall product; from the perspective of enterprise conditions, the domestic packaging machinery industry lacks leading companies, and there are not many companies with large production scales and high-grade products; In terms of development, my country is still basically at the imitation stage, with weak self-development capabilities, and scientific research funding only accounts for 1% of sales, while foreign countries are as high as 8% to 10%. Generally speaking, compared with international advanced products, my country's packaging machinery is at a disadvantage in the competition of product development, performance, quality, reliability, and service.

Pharmaceutical packaging machinery is a branch with high technical content and requirements in general packaging machinery. Since pharmaceutical equipment is an important part of GMP hardware, since my country launched the GMP compulsory certification system, various pharmaceutical factories have accelerated the pace of technological transformation, and the substantial update of production equipment has brought a favorable situation for the upstream industrial pharmaceutical machinery industry in the pharmaceutical industry. A large number of production line transformations have brought a huge market for pharmaceutical machinery companies. For example, the ampoule (water needle) series washing-drying-filling-sealing linkage unit introduced and developed by Changsha Zheng Traditional Chinese Medicine Machinery Factory has ended the single-machine production history that has been used for decades in my country. After several improvements, the product has been sold on more than 600 production lines and exported to nearly 20 countries including Brazil, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran.

Of course, on the whole, the research and development of most of the packaging machinery with more advanced data technology in my country is still in the imitation class, and the ability of independent development is still very limited. For this reason, many large foreign companies have introduced their own technologies and components to China and processed them locally, thereby reducing costs and launching fierce competition with local products.

According to statistics, as early as 2003, the global pharmaceutical packaging market reached 11.2 billion US dollars, with an average annual growth rate of nearly 5%. In 2006, it is estimated that it has exceeded 13 billion US dollars. The United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy account for the largest market share in the world's pharmaceutical packaging industry, while China is the fastest growing country. In accordance with the development speed of China's pharmaceutical industry in recent years, the annual gross output value of pharmaceutical packaging materials will quickly exceed 20 billion yuan in a short period of time.

At present, the annual output value of my country's pharmaceutical packaging industry is about 15 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of more than 10%. However, it can only meet the needs of about 80% of domestic pharmaceutical companies, and the contribution rate of packaging materials to the pharmaceutical industry is also low. In developed countries, packaging accounts for 30% of the value of medicines, but in China, this value is less than 10%.