2020 is destined to be an extraordinary year, the closing year of the comprehensive construction of a well-off society and the 13th Five-Year Plan, as well as a year for the whole country to fight the new coronary pneumonia epidemic with one heart and one mind. In the face of the sudden epidemic, China's economy has been greatly affected, and the packaging and printing industry is also facing new difficulties and challenges. Since the full outbreak of the new coronary pneumonia epidemic, under the leadership of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, people of all ethnic groups across the country have joined hands to overcome the difficulties, and the printing industry has comprehensively carried out in-depth study and implementation of General Secretary Xi Jinping's series of important speech instructions on the prevention and control of the epidemic, while conscientiously implementing the decision-making and deployment of epidemic prevention and control, while actively promoting the resumption of work and production of industry enterprises. At present, the domestic epidemic has been basically under control, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology April 15 release of the news: small and medium-sized enterprises to resume work rate has reached 84%, but the uncertainty of the foreign epidemic and to foreign trade enterprises a fatal blow.

 

 

In response to the epidemic, the central and local governments have successively introduced relevant support policies to facilitate the prevention and control of the epidemic and the resumption of production by enterprises, hoping to minimize the impact of the epidemic. After the spread of the epidemic abroad, a series of stable foreign trade policy measures have been introduced to help enterprises solve their problems. Although my country's GDP fell by 6.8 year-on-year in the first quarter, the main economic indicators have shown a rebound momentum in March, and the long-term development trend of my country's economy will not change.

 

Overall decline, individual areas still have a breakthrough

 

As a market area with the highest proportion of the printing industry, packaging and printing widely serve the national economy and people's livelihood, such as food, daily chemicals, electronics, tobacco and alcohol, medicine and other fields. Its development is not only closely related to the development of downstream service areas, but also affected by papermaking, Machinery manufacturing and other upstream industries.

 

The "Basic Situation of the National Press and Publishing Industry in 2018" shows that the operating income of packaging, decoration and printing was 1068.645 billion yuan, an increase of 5.05 percent, accounting for 77 percent of the total output value of the entire printing industry; the total profit was 63.709 billion yuan, down 0.16 percent, basically the same as in previous years. Since the outbreak of the epidemic, affected by the national economic situation, packaging and printing has also been severely hit, not only to deal with the crazy rise in raw material costs, labor shortages and other long-standing contradictions, but also to find ways to deal with the rising cost of epidemic prevention, poor logistics, sudden decline in business, cash flow pressure and other sudden difficulties.

 

According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on March 27, from January to February 2020, enterprises above designated size in the printing and recording media reproduction industry (that is, industrial legal entities with annual main business income of 20 million yuan and above) achieved operating income of 63.16 billion yuan, up -29.1 year-on-year; operating costs of 53.23 billion yuan, up -29.1 year-on-year; and total profits of 1.65 billion yuan, up -60.2 year-on-year. It can be seen that the epidemic has had a significant impact on the operation of printing companies. However, the impact of the epidemic on certain industries is limited. According to the data from January to February, the total profits of 4 of the 41 major industrial industries increased year-on-year, including tobacco products, non-ferrous metal smelting and rolling processing industry, oil and gas mining industry, agricultural and sideline food processing industry, and packaging and printing enterprises related to these four industries (such as tobacco packaging and printing enterprises) also achieved year-on-year growth. Of course, this situation only exists in certain special industries, but it can be seen that the epidemic is a crisis and an opportunity in any industry.

 

Face the pressure, timely transformation emergency stop loss

 

Under the epidemic, a part of the packaging and printing enterprises to find the right time, quickly attack, not only to ensure the original production order, but also to contribute to the fight against the epidemic, which on the one hand benefited from the enterprise's perfect asset allocation, on the other hand, it is also closely related to a series of transformation and upgrading measures actively taken. For example, the industry's leading enterprises Evergreen, the backbone of Lijia, Shandong Bihai, Lishunyuan, Wen Hong, etc. have opened up epidemic prevention product production lines. In addition to breakthroughs in the production of epidemic prevention materials, there are also enterprises in other areas of innovation to carry out cross-border attempts, such as: Yutong, Meiyingsen, and so on.

 

The above-mentioned measures of enterprises, on the one hand, can contribute to the national epidemic prevention; on the other hand, they can open up new profit channels and ease their own survival pressure. However, it is important to balance the relationship between the various business types before and after the outbreak and the transformation of the enterprise. Every transformation is an active or passive choice for an enterprise to face industry changes. Only based on the main core business and choosing strategies that conform to the industry's operating logic and future development trends can it finally achieve a gorgeous turn and avoid temporary speculation and lead to failure.

 

Intelligent manufacturing, gradually improved in the exploration

 

With the introduction and deepening of the concept of "Internet", the concept of intelligence is widely used in all walks of life. In the printing industry, Yatushi, Longlide, Luxin Tianyi and other enterprises have already explored their own models in the intelligent construction of a certain link. However, compared with the degree of intelligence in other industries, the printing industry still has a certain gap.

 

As far as the current printing industry is concerned, due to the different downstream industries served by each enterprise, the market demand model is different, the product process is different, and because the management basis of each enterprise is different, the degree of intelligence is naturally different. How to promote the construction of "intelligent" platform from the four levels of standardization, modularization, automation and lean, the whole industry is still in the exploratory stage, and there is no successful case of the whole process to promote. From the perspective of different subdivisions, packaging and printing companies whose main business is corrugated boxes attach importance to the intelligent construction of printing, post-printing, and logistics; and companies whose main business is cartons, gift boxes, etc. Pay more attention to the links of production before printing, quality control, production monitoring, logistics tracking, etc., which are all caused by the business differences of each enterprise.

 

After the outbreak of the new coronary pneumonia epidemic, intelligent construction is more urgent. The future intelligent upgrading of the printing industry will mainly focus on the following links: the development and application of industrial software such as pre-press design proofing based on VR/AR and other visualization technologies; Linkage between pre-press production software and printing production platform; Data collection and analysis of printed live parts; Modular flexible configuration and flexible connection between post-press processes; jointly with equipment manufacturing enterprises to enhance the degree of automation of manual parts, etc.

 

On the road of intelligent construction, enterprises should actually analyze their own product types, production links, management and operation methods, customer service and other characteristics, combine artificial intelligence and big data and other emerging technologies, increase research and development efforts, reduce enterprise operating costs, and strive for government financial support.

 

Green packaging materials, step up research and development to promote vigorously

 

Green environmental protection has always been a hot spot in the printing and packaging industry, and it is also one of the development directions of the industry in the future. Jihong, Yutong, Jielong and other enterprises have already laid out environmentally friendly packaging products for a long time, walking in the forefront of the industry. On May 1, 2020, the new version of the "Beijing Municipal Solid Waste Management Regulations" was implemented, known as the new version of the "plastic limit order", and more and more standardized policies and regulations will bring new opportunities to paper packaging and printing companies.

 

In the future, the R & D and innovation of packaging materials are mainly reflected in the aspects of functionality, environmental protection, anti-counterfeiting, and RFID embedding. For example, Anqiu Tianliyuan New Materials Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shandong Xinchuan, has developed and manufactured a variety of recyclable green polymer shuttle flow boxes in recent years. IFCOSYSTEMS also announced recently that the factory cooperating with China Poly Tyco Group (POLYTECGROUP) will mainly produce recyclable plastic turnover baskets serving the Chinese market; in the domestic market, there have been a number of pulp molding products mainly made of food raw materials such as rice husk or sugarcane pulp, which are not only environmentally friendly and recyclable, but also naturally degradable; internationally, functional materials such as polylactic acid film and edible film have also appeared.

 

In addition, the industry's equipment manufacturing, ink, adhesive and other enterprises jointly launched water-based ink, solvent-free composite and other source control technology, but also more and more widely used.

 

Cross-border operation, enhance core competitiveness and enhance added value

 

The printing industry, which is between the secondary and tertiary industries, should not only serve the downstream industries, but also be subject to the upstream industries, which is very passive. In addition to speeding up the research and development of key products and building core competitiveness, capable enterprises should also consider how to extend from the bottom of the added value of the industrial chain to the upstream and downstream, and pay close attention to innovative technologies and applications in intelligent linkage and the construction of big data integration application platform. Cross-border operation is not a new thing in the printing circle. In recent years, the cross-border operation of domestic enterprises has mainly concentrated in the following fields: Yutong, Jinjia and other packaging and printing enterprises have opened up a platform based on AR technology and made great strides into the field of intelligent packaging. This measure undoubtedly plays an important role in increasing customer viscosity and profitability. Yongfa, Jielong, Meiyingsen and other enterprises are optimistic about the pulp molding field and invest; evergreen, a leading domestic packaging equipment company, is making efforts in machine tool processing, industrial park investment, financial leasing and other fields. Shanghai Jinting Cosmetics Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Shanghai Xianggang Holding Company, is a popular cosmetics industry. The above-mentioned enterprises are mainly customer-centric to carry out related business, and this year's epidemic under the many conversion of epidemic prevention materials enterprises, is hoping to find opportunities in the crisis, to avoid sudden short-term losses.

 

Digital Printing Brings New Ideas for Packaging Enterprises

 

In recent years, with the continuous development of network technology, digitalization has been widely used in all walks of life. Digital printing technology because of its simple process, timely adjustable, suitable for personalized service and short version of the characteristics of the order, in the packaging and printing industry has caused a certain degree of attention, but also because of the cost, color, format and other issues, for a long time, in the field of packaging and printing applications accounted for a relatively low proportion.

 

In recent years, the digital printing equipment of HP, Konica Minolta, Kodak and other companies has improved in terms of substrate, width and speed. In the field of digital post-press, the sales volume of Shigaudi Company in the domestic market is considerable. Domestic post-press equipment manufacturers Tien Cen and Kos have gradually begun to attach importance to this field and have begun to develop digital post-press efficiency equipment.

 

With the upgrading of domestic consumption, the post-90s and post-00s have become the main consumers. Their consumption concepts will focus on "highlighting personality", "differentiation", "highly dependent on social tools" and "interest is king". In the future, there will be more and more products related to these consumption habits, which provides room for the digitalization of packaging and printing.

 

In 2020, printing companies are facing more difficulties than in previous years. Although some companies have fallen in the big waves of progress, this aspect is conducive to the strengthening of industrial concentration, and on the other hand, it can also stimulate related companies to continue to explore and grow. The thorns of the road, only crawling forward to get on the road of Yangguan. [Helen printing and packaging, reproduced to China packaging network]]

 

(The author of this article is the Secretary-General of the Packaging and Printing Branch of China Printing and Equipment Industry Association)