Paper packaging industry: looking forward to conceptual and disruptive breakthroughs
Source：Time：2020-10-16 13:39:00CTR：
The development of China's paper packaging industry is synchronized with my country's reform and opening up. After 35 years of hard work, my country has become the world's largest paper packaging producer, but it is not yet a strong production country. Our development is experiencing realistic challenges. Reform is the key to determining fate. Our most important task at present is to analyze where the biggest obstacles to the development of the industry are, and to explore new ways of sustainable and healthy development. China’s paper packaging industry is taking a different path from Europe, America and other countries and regions. According to my country's actual national conditions, the transformation and development of the industry cannot completely imitate others. How to take a new road is a major issue before us.
Inevitable price war? Strictly speaking, the paper industry and the carton industry belong to the same industry, but in China these two industries are relatively independent and distinct. Why is this? In addition to the influence of the background of China's economic development mode, the smallholder awareness in the carton industry is also a very important reason. It is this awareness that blocks the penetration of the industrial chain. In the end, the scale of papermaking enterprises is getting bigger and bigger, and carton enterprises can only rely on eternal "guerrilla warfare" in order to defend their one-acre three-point land. In fact, it is very difficult for the carton industry to occupy a place in the national economic system as an independent industry. First of all, our carton companies are still fighting on their own. The 300-kilometer market radius is the ceiling for their growth; secondly, they compete with paper companies in the upper reaches of the industry chain and downstream end users. Together with the frontal competition from their peers, carton The business model of this kind of business model ultimately determines the small, scattered and chaotic pattern of the carton industry. Currently, China's paper product output has ranked among the top in the world. In 2011, the global production of corrugated cardboard was 20.22 billion square meters, and China's output reached 53.55 billion square meters, accounting for a quarter. This ratio is already amazing, but due to the difference in statistical calibers, in fact, my country's corrugated cardboard production may far exceed this value. China's carton companies are like "Tuba Road", ubiquitous and ubiquitous. In Shanxi, there were 108 carton companies on one street. The sight of more than 100 carton companies in a street like this across the country is not limited to Shanxi. In Heshang Town, Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou, the whole town is the gathering place of many carton companies. At the same time, there is a serious fact that needs our attention. The profit of carton companies has been very low because of their high production costs, among which the cost of raw materials accounts for about 70% of the total cost. In the face of severe market competition among peers, carton companies seem to have no other choice. The only way is to fight for living space at low prices. However, the price method is the lowest-end method in commercial competition. If everyone relies on price wars to seek development, there will be no way out. Therefore, we see that even if a group of companies with financial strength have emerged in the industry, they have the ability to invest tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of yuan to develop the carton business, but they are ultimately faced with the same problem: it is difficult for companies to grow bigger and bigger. It is difficult to achieve scale effect. In this way, the carton industry is encountering a systemic bottleneck, not a specific link. In other words, the current operation or business model of the entire carton industry has reached the ceiling of development, and we have nowhere to go and we must explore new models. How to break out of the development circle? According to the incomplete statistics of the Paper Products Packaging Committee of China Packaging Federation, there are currently 4,500 corrugated cardboard production lines nationwide. With this production pattern, let alone the survival and development of the company, just adapting to the national environmental protection requirements is a sad barrier for many carton companies blindly pursuing production capacity. Some places now require that in the next three years, all companies that need to discharge air pollution must pass environmental protection acceptance. For many carton companies with meager profits, this is likely to be a fatal blow. Some phenomena worthy of reflection have emerged. Some carton companies do not make money from selling cartons, so it is better to rent out production sites to obtain high profits. From this we can also see that the current operating conditions of some carton companies are extremely bleak. This is the case for small businesses, and large projects may not be better. A company in Chongqing invested heavily in the corrugated box project. The first phase of the project invested 500 million yuan. Unfortunately, it was still the original production and business model, and the products and services themselves did not break through. There is a project in Jiangsu. Now 1.05 billion yuan has been invested. This carton company is the world's largest single plant. Its production process and logistics settings are very reasonable, so the operation is relatively good. The company plans to clone another factory 500 kilometers away. Is this form a breakthrough to the existing model? I think it needs time to test. The packaging industry involves a wide range of areas and is closely related to people's consumer life. The country is now vigorously promoting urbanization, which means that more producers will gradually become consumers, so that the development space of the packaging industry will become even greater. Therefore, the growth rate of the packaging industry in 2014 will not be less than 12%, and the use range and application types of paper packaging will also increase. This is a huge opportunity for our industry. However, we have also seen that the upstream paper industry is trying to open up the manufacturing channels of papermaking and paper packaging production, and hope to get in touch with end users directly. And end users are also trying to change their business methods, and some brands are setting up their own carton enterprises. If the production and operation models of carton companies do not change, can we still adapt to the new round of market competition? With the rapid development of the Internet and rapid technological update, carton companies must come up with new ideas as soon as possible. New approach. The biggest problem and confusion of the entire industry at present is the problem of concepts and concepts. The reason why many smart people have no ideas and blindly find their way on the inherent track of the industry, the key is that they can't jump out of this inherent thinking circle. Let us take a look at how "outsiders" operate the carton project. In 2013, Shandong Century Sunshine Paper Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Century Sunshine") launched the "Sunshine Concept Packaging Preprint Project", which provides creative design as the lead, preprint projects as the support, and business model innovation As a means and a technological revolution as a guarantee, we provide end customers with one-stop printing and packaging solutions from creativity, design, packaging, and logistics, that is, Sunshine's new concept packaging solutions. This is a new attempt by paper companies to open up the industrial chain. In European and American countries and regions, 40% of corrugated boxes are produced by paper companies. In China, upstream paper-making companies blindly chase scale and become bigger and bigger; downstream carton companies show the characteristics of a large number, small scale, and scattered industry. There are currently more than 40,000 carton companies in China. The huge difference in size between "elephant" and "ant" makes paper and carton companies not intervene in each other, forming a split situation. There are many links and many participants, which not only makes the packaging production cost high and the cycle long, but also brings difficulties in management and control to downstream enterprises. The new concept packaging solution of Century Sunshine is not only an innovative transformation of an enterprise, but also an active exploration for the healthy development of the traditional carton industry. Century Sunshine’s attempt, we will continue to follow and observe. I think that at the key node of transformation and development, the whole industry needs to think carefully and make bold ideas. Only by changing the inherent concept can we have a disruptive breakthrough and usher in greater development.
