The 4th International PET & RPET Industry Forum (2016)

Status quo and outlook for plastic packaging
——Mr. Wang Guiqing from CCFGroup

2016-11-03 16:45:49

Mr. Wang firstly introduced status quo of plastic package, which accounts for 1/4 in the industry and is still growing. Plastic, along with paper and paperboard, metals and glass, is one of four major materials for packaging. Respectively they account for 25%, 30%, 25% and 15%. Plastics accounts for 50% of the material used in food packaging. Plastic packaging has the characteristics of light and good transparency, good anti-corrosion quality and moderate mechanical strength, etc.

Secondly, he pointed out differences of plastics. BOPP is mainly applied in printing film bag, heating film and matt film, etc. HDPE packaging covers wide range of industries like good, medicine and daily chemical products, which can be used to produce bottles, bottle caps and packaging bags. Then he gave a brief introduction of HDPE and BOPET packaging status quo.

Finally, he gave the forecast on plastic packaging. New capacity of BOPP may grow by 378kt in 2017, an increase of 7.13% year-on-year. Coupled with the eliminated waste capacity, the capacity may increase by around 5% in 2017. Characteristics of development tendency are as follows: Production technology enhances, solving a series of production problems like film-broken and low-speed. Production of conventional thick film is gradually transferred to thin film. Functional thin film grows rapidly. Develop efficient long and wide production line, and eliminate outdated one. Develop differential BOPP products to reduce dependency on PP price.

As for HDPE packaging outlook, he said that HDPE feedstock capacity expands at a steady rate in China, gradually developing from low-end to medium-to-high end. Supply of special materials including bottle cap increases in China. Breakthrough of special-grade product relies on oil-based producers, and it is still hard to expect coal-based products to enter into this area. About BOPET, Mr. Wang thought that it is becoming more popular, for its price advantage and is likely to snatch market share from BOPP in drinking bottle in the future. The application in heat-resistance PET develops rapidly and Drinking water package bottle (bucket) market as well as 5 gallon PET drinking water bucket will keep developing.