Diversified Development and Market Trends of Packaging Materials

The main packaging materials include glass, paper, aluminum, steel, plastic, and paper-plastic composite containers. Due to their own characteristics and advantages, they have all undergone significant development in recent years, showing a trend of diversified development.

Beverages: In the beverage market, plastic containers are used the most in most countries. From a global perspective, PET bottles account for more than 70% of the beverage market, and the proportion of PET bottles in carbonated beverage packaging in China is about 60%. Plastic containers have begun to enter the beer industry worldwide and are competing with glass bottles for market share.

Food cans: The food can, beverage, oil and chemical industries, and other related industries continue to develop. Some varieties can be replaced by other packaging materials, but some products can only be packaged in non-metallic materials. China’s deep processing of agricultural products and the export of canned foods have continued to increase, making tinplate an important market. The total output and export volume of the can industry have maintained a double-digit growth trend for many years. Canned mushrooms, asparagus, oranges, bamboo shoots, and other products are the most exported products in the world.

Beer: China is the world’s largest beer producer and mainly uses glass bottles. Metal cans (including aluminum and steel) account for only about 3%. From a global perspective, glass bottles account for 72%, metal cans account for 28%, and PET bottles account for 0.4%. Therefore, there is great potential for the development of metal canned beer. China’s two-piece aluminum cans began the development of metal cans, and the localization of aluminum alloy thin plates is also developing. In recent years, steel cans have developed rapidly.

Foreign insiders in the metal packaging industry have felt that tinplate packaging is facing increasingly severe competition and challenges from other packaging materials such as plastic and paper, and they need to make efforts to enhance shelf visual impact and convenience functions and improve product grades.