The electronic information industry is China's pillar and leading industry. Electronic information product manufacturers have fully utilized the state's encouragement of export policies, seized the opportunity to expand exports, increased participation in international market competition, and the rapid growth of product exports has become China's major export revenue. The products, their required boxes, trays, cushions, etc. are also a very impressive number. However, how to improve product packaging design and improve packaging quality, especially how to replace EPS plastics and wooden pallets is a top priority.
The manufacturing industry of electronic information products is a new growth point for the national economy. According to data from relevant departments, in 2000, the sales of electronic information products manufacturing industry realized 580 billion yuan, an increase of 34%, which was three times higher than the growth of the national economy and boosted the national economy. The growth; electronic information products exports reached 53 billion US dollars, by 2005, exports will reach 100 billion US dollars, more than doubled in 2000. According to relevant departmental information, the main indicators for the economic operation of the electronic information product manufacturing industry in 2001 were industrial added value of 160 billion yuan, an increase of 20%, such as 45 million planned monitors, 36 million color television sets, and 15 million video disk players. Domestic appliances such as air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines have also grown year by year, and the number of boxes, pallets, cushions, etc. required has also increased.
Since the reform and opening up, the living standards of the people in our country have rapidly increased. Various household appliances that used to be symbols of luxury life have gradually entered the homes of ordinary people. It is understood that the social capacity of China's refrigerators is about 130 million units and 100 million air conditioners. It is no longer a novelty for a family to have two or three color TV refrigerators, and increasingly diverse household electrical appliances improve people's quality of life.
At the same time, our home appliance manufacturers have also achieved rapid development. In many types of household electrical appliances, China has entered the ranks of the world's major producers or powers. Not only that, China’s home appliances are also going global, and exports are growing at a rate of about 20% each year.
At present, the packaging materials and methods of large-scale home appliances products mainly refer to color TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners.
China's large-scale household appliances industry has formed an intensive production pattern. Color TV industry has formed 8 large-scale enterprises such as Sichuan Changhong, Shenzhen Konka, TCL, etc.; about 70 air-conditioner manufacturers, Zhuhai Gree Electric Appliance Co., Ltd., Haier Group, Chunlan Group, and Shanghai Sharp Electric Co., Ltd. More than half of the output; in the refrigerator industry, Kelon (Rongsheng), Haier, Xinfei, and Meiling maintain an absolute advantage. The total output of the four companies accounted for 61.6% of the national total output; in the washing machine industry, Little Swan and Haier Seven companies, namely Rongshida, Weishili, Jinsong, Jinling and Xiaoya, accounted for 71.4% of the country's total, and they are leaders in the industry.
The packaging of large household appliances emphasizes the protection of the goods and their decorative requirements are not high. This is mainly commensurate with the sale of goods for large household appliances; in both shopping malls and supermarkets, the products of large household appliances are sold by direct display without packaging. This is in contrast to the way that candy, biscuits, canned food, etc. rely on packaging to absorb consumer museums.
All kinds of large household appliances are similar in terms of packaging materials. Corrugated cartons are the most commonly used form of external packaging. Almost all large household appliances use paper packaging. Wood packaging boxes have disappeared on the packaging of large household appliances. EPS is still playing a leading role in internal cushioning packaging. Spun cloth or foamed PE sheets are the most commonly used covering materials.
In the structural design, there are certain differences in the carton structure for the volume and characteristics of different products. Refrigerators are relatively bulky household appliances. Since they cannot be tilted too much, the refrigerator packaging has been abandoned in favor of integrated packaging and replaced by two or three-piece structures, namely bottom trays, cylindrical boxes and tops. cover. This structure not only facilitates the removal of the refrigerator but also makes the use of materials more reasonable. At present, the more commonly used cardboard structures are double corrugated cardboard and single corrugated cardboard, and there are no uniform requirements and standards of use. Because the load-bearing is mainly on the bottom of the box, the force of the box packaging is very small. Therefore, the split packaging structure can adopt different corrugated structure in different parts. The more reasonable structure is mostly used: the bottom tray adopts double corrugated structure, while the box and top cover use single-layer corrugated cardboard. This will not only save material consumption, achieve the purpose of packaging weight reduction, but also ensure that the packaging plays its due protective role. The packaging structure of washing machines, air conditioners and refrigerators is very similar.
Due to its relatively small size, TVs are still dominated by integrated carton structures: Double corrugated cardboard is used. In addition, the appearance of television packages is the most varied in large appliances.
The future development direction of the packaging structure of large household appliances will be based on split-structure design. Different corrugated cardboard will be used at different locations to achieve the best protection and economy.
In terms of supply methods, most large-scale home appliance manufacturers have gradually changed the way they buy out-of-the-box containers. The acquisition or self-built professional carton manufacturers can reduce costs, and can also flexibly produce and adapt to business needs.
At present, the overall trend of packaging of large household appliances on timber is to reduce weight and thinness, which is consistent with the development trend of global packaging. Therefore, it is possible to achieve a reduction in the weight of packaging materials due to two reasons: one is the improvement of the quality of packaging paper; the other is the modernization of transportation methods, especially the latter plays a crucial role.
In recent years, the logistics field in China has widely adopted palletization and containerized transportation. The widespread use of modern loading and unloading equipment such as forklifts has greatly reduced the number of rough handling incidents. Tray as a symbol of modern logistics has also become an important part of corporate packaging, although it is not directly passed to consumers.
The current major problems Although China's electronic information industry has made great progress in packaging, there are certain problems in certain areas.
The overall structure of the outer packaging structure lacks First of all, in the packaging structure design, some packaging is not yet reasonable. In particular, integrated cartons are still widely used, which wastes materials and does not achieve optimal protection. In addition, there are few considerations for home appliance manufacturers to make adjustments to packaging under different climatic conditions. For example, the dry areas in the north and the rainy areas in the south have very different moisture-proof requirements for packaging. At present, large-scale household appliances in China have almost the same outer packaging and have almost no moisture-proof and rain-proof functions. As a result, some of the boxes are damped and softened in wet weather, and the protection performance is greatly reduced. This situation is also more serious in the export of household appliances packaging. In addition, in terms of the use of paper for packaging boxes, some companies emphasize one-sidedly the cost reduction, the quality of the paper cannot be guaranteed, the strength of the paper box cannot be achieved, and the carton has been damaged when household appliances reach the consumers.
In fact, the buffer packaging industry still uses a lot of EPS, which does not meet the requirements of environmental protection, especially on the packaging of export products, which may cause serious consequences. Take color TV as an example. Every year, China needs to consume about 30,000 tons of EPS foamed plastic, which translates into a volume of about 1.2 million cubic meters. We can see how amazing the amount of EPS consumed by the entire household appliance industry is.
China has actively promoted the use of new environmentally friendly paper buffer packaging materials such as pulp molding and honeycomb paperboard in electronic information products, and has achieved certain results, especially in the small size and light weight of mobile phones, telephones, fax machines, printers, and electronic keyboards. In the electronic information products, pulp molded products were used instead of EPS as cushioning materials; some exported electronic machine tools and household appliances also used honeycomb paperboard instead of wood to make trays and crates. However, some problems have also been encountered in the promotion and application. The use situation is not optimistic. The main reasons for this are the problems in the pulp molding product itself; poor elasticity, structural design, mold design, and production and processing capabilities are far from meeting the needs of electronic information product packaging, especially large-scale household appliances. Some of the more advanced foreign countries such as laser knife cutting multilayer paper cushioning products have not yet appeared in the country. Although there are many types of new types of cushioning products developed in China, most of them have such defects, and it is difficult to enter the actual factory production. How to find the ideal EPS alternative material in buffer packaging is still a rather serious problem.
Again, wood pallets are still in heavy use, and alternative work is not going smoothly. Taking the packaging of picture tubes and color TVs only as an example, according to incomplete statistics, each year, disposable wooden pallets consume about 100,000 cubic meters of wood (including disposable wooden trays for glass bulbs). Although trays made of various plastic trays, steel trays, and honeycomb sheets are used, they are not ideal. The former two are mainly influenced by price factors. The latter is due to poor production technology and overall molding technology in the production of pallets, packaging boxes and other products. The automation degree of the production line is low, and the molding process is almost manual operation. It is difficult for the honeycomb products to achieve standardization and serialization, which affects the operation support of the entire production line on the assembly line.
In addition, honeycomb paperboard and pulp molded products also have the problem of poor water and moisture resistance. After prolonged transport, especially under high humidity conditions, the strength of the box and tray after the dampening weakened, and they could not withstand the impact and sway, resulting in damage.
At the same time, the government's competent authorities have not developed sufficient policies and regulations. Therefore, many users still take a wait-and-see attitude toward using pulp molded products and honeycomb paperboard products instead of EPS plastics or wooden pallets.
The inequality of the electronic information industry has become an important economic pillar industry in China, and it has become one of the largest export-oriented commodities. How to improve the packaging design and improve the packaging quality, especially in the buffer packaging, wood packaging to adapt to the requirements of European and American countries, requires the joint efforts of packaging manufacturers and electronic information product manufacturing. (From "China Packaging News")