PET seeks wider application

PET is the most widely used beverage packaging material today.
PET bottles originate from the early 80s of the last century. Due to its light weight, easy forming, low price and easy mass production, the PET bottle has developed rapidly with unstoppable momentum since its inception. In just 20 years or so, it has become the world's leading beverage packaging form. It is not only widely used in the packaging of carbonated beverages, bottled water, spices, cosmetics, liquor, dried fruit candy and other products, but also specially processed hot filling bottles can be used for the packaging of fruit juices and tea beverages. PET beer bottles processed with the most advanced technology are also entering the market, and aseptic PET bottles are also in full swing. It can be said that technological progress is continuously expanding the application field for PET bottles. It not only continues to expand the traditional market in drinking water and carbonated beverages, but it is also launching an impact on the final positions of beer and other glass and aluminum can packaging.
At present, more than 30% of beverages in China use PET bottle packaging, and this proportion is rising year by year. It is conservatively estimated that the output of PET bottles in China last year should be more than 6 billion. The PET bottle industry has become the most important packaging form for carbonated beverages and bottled water in China; it has also achieved great development in hot filling areas such as fruit juices and tea beverages; and it is becoming the most important edible oil packaging form; condiments such as soy sauce and vinegar Other products also began to use PET bottles; the liquor market pioneered by Wuliangye has also started. Beer manufacturers and professional bottle manufacturers are closely watching the huge market of beer, and various technical lectures and exchanges continue. PET equipment manufacturers have also targeted sightings in the future market for the aseptic filling of beverages. In recent years, the shortage of PET raw materials in China has been eased; in terms of manufacturing technology, China has introduced a large number of the most advanced production equipment in the world, including the two-step equipment of Canadian H USKY and French DISEL, and the Italian SIPA one-step high-speed production equipment. And Japan ASB and AOKI one-step equipment.
At present, China's PET bottle producers mainly come from two parts: professional bottle manufacturers such as Zhuhai Zhongfu, Shanghai Zijiang, SINOCAN, etc.; beverage producers, especially bottled water producers such as Wahaha, Kangshifu, Robust, etc.
Large-scale professional bottle makers mainly use the two-step process of Husky and SIDEL to produce PET bottles. They use centralized production of preforms and dispersion of bottle blowing processes. The main suppliers are carbonated beverage producers such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and some use hot filling. Bottling juice and tea beverage manufacturers, such as Tianjin Great Lakes and Kunshan Uniforms. These professional bottle makers have strong technical force, advanced equipment, and can produce all kinds of bottles in batches. Among them, Zhuhai Zhongfu enjoys the good name of the Asian bottle king, and its scale of business is the first in Asia. In addition, some small-sized bottle makers use Japanese one-step equipment to supply domestic beverages, edible oils, and condiments.
On the other hand, mineral water and pure water producers mainly adopt their own methods of producing PET bottles, such as Hangzhou Wahaha, Guangzhou Robust, Tianjin Master Kong, etc. Most of them have a large number of one-step production equipment in Italy and Japan. Some manufacturers of tea beverages, such as Master Kong, also use Italian Sipa equipment to produce hot-fill PET bottles.
I. Carbonated Beverages and Bottled Water Carbonated beverages are one of the traditional and most important markets for PET bottles.
According to the complete 1998 statistics, there were 33 Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola companies that produced foreign brands of carbonated beverages that year and produced 2,861,621 tons of beverages. According to product packaging:
Polyester bottle production in 1998 was 1,527,434 tons, an increase of 18.24% over the same period in 1997, accounting for 56.38% of foreign brand output;
The production capacity of cans in 1998 was 841,072 tons, an increase of 3.20% over the same period in 1997, accounting for 31.05% of the foreign brand output;
The glass bottle production in 1998 was 208,958 tons, an increase of 8.38% over the same period in 1997. Accounted for 7.71% of foreign brand output;
In 1998, the current production capacity was 13,1500 tons, an increase of 5.6% over the same period of 1997, accounting for 4.86% of the foreign brand output.
The statistics for 1995 are as follows:
In 1995, there were 28 companies producing foreign brands of carbonated beverages in China, and a total of 161,2229.3 tons of beverages for beverages with a capacity of 717,245 tons of polyester bottles, an increase of 27.6% over the previous year, accounting for 48.9% of the total production;
Cans of beverages were 500354.7 tons, an increase of 47.5% over the previous year, accounting for 34.2% of the total output;
The glass bottle beverage was 160232.9 tons, an increase of 4.9% over the previous year, accounting for 10.9% of the total production; + The current adjustment beverage was 852.26.6 tons, an increase of 42.1% over the previous year, accounting for the total output. 5.9%;
In other packaging, Tetra Pak drinks accounted for 0.1% of the total output.
It is not difficult to see that PET bottles already account for most of the packaging of Coca-Cola and Pepsi carbonated beverages. And its development momentum is the strongest.
The various domestic brands of carbonated drinks produced in China are also similar to the situation. The use of PET bottles is even higher.
The development of the two Coke giants in China is extremely rapid, with an average of doubling their output every three years. Although in recent years, due to a variety of reasons, such as its large base, the growth rate has been relatively reduced, but the absolute number of its growth is still quite alarming.
At present, there are basically two bottling factories in China's major consumer cities, and the construction contracts signed between Coca-Cola and the Chinese government have also been completed. There is light industry news that after China's accession to the WTO, it will be possible to cancel restrictions on the construction of the two Coca-Cola companies and the growth of total production.
At present, Coca-Cola and Pepsi's bottling plants in China are using PET bottles purchased from professional bottle manufacturers. As two Coca-Cola's requirements for PET bottles are very strict, China's suppliers for bottles are currently Zhuhai Zhongfu and Shanghai Zijiang. Both companies have dozens of HUCKY and SIDEL two-step machines, including the H USKY96 cavity preformer and the SIDEL SBO24 high-speed blower. Zhongfu's bottle-making factory is also spread all over the country, and almost all of the major Coke factories have Chinese-rich bottle-making plants nearby. These bottling plants were synchronized with the Coke filling plant. In recent years, Zijiang has not been satisfied with the market in Shanghai. It has moved north to the west and has established new factories in Tianjin, Hangzhou and Henan. It is China's most powerful professional PET bottle production plant next to Zhongfu. The two companies included almost all of Coca-Cola and Pepsi's product packaging, advanced technical equipment and technical support so that they could meet the continuous production of two new Coke bottles of PET.
Bottled water is the fastest growing type of beverage in China in recent years. It is also another major user of PET bottles, and has even surpassed carbonated beverages to become the largest product category in China using PET bottles. In Hangzhou Wahaha alone, the output reached 930,150 tons in 1998, and Guangdong today is 321,455 tons.
In addition, pure water has risen rapidly in China due to its small impact on water sources, and it has now outperformed mineral water in production. In addition, after several rounds of development in the bottled water market in China in recent years, several major bottled water production bases have been formed with Hangzhou Wahaha as the leader. In 1998, the total pure water production of the four Wahaha, Robust, Zhengguang, Meilin and Yibao companies reached a total of 1.08 million tons. One Wahaha pure water production reached 540,000 tons. Zhengguang and pure water production is 200,000 tons.
In 1998, more than 100,000 tons purified water company:
Company name production (tons)
Hangzhou Wahaha Group Corporation 543625
Guangdong Today Group Co., Ltd. 200802
Shanghai Meilin Zhengguanghe (Group) Co., Ltd. 199526
Shenzhen Yibao Food & Beverage Co., Ltd. 134572
Total 1078525
PET bottle is the most important packaging form of bottled water, and most of the water drinks are packaged in PET bottles. For the sake of process requirements, the bottled water plant mainly purchases PET production equipment to produce PET bottles. The equipment is mainly based on the one-step method. These devices are mainly from Japanese Nissei and Aokigu. With the continuous expansion of the strength and output of bottled water production enterprises, since 1997, Italy's SIPA's high-speed one-step equipment has entered China, and has come from behind. Both Wahaha and Dingxin Group have purchased large quantities of the company’s equipment. In addition, Robust also purchased H USKY and SIDEL's two-step device in recent years. This shows that the growing demand of Chinese bottled water producers for high-speed PET production models is booming.
In short, the carbonated beverage and bottled water market will continue to develop steadily in the next few years, and will still be the market with the largest and most demanding PET bottles.
Second, the liquor market glass bottle is the traditional market of Chinese liquor. Although the share of Chinese liquor in the entire alcoholic beverage market has been shrinking in recent years, absolute production is still very large. In 1998, the output of Chinese liquor was 5.85 million tons. The fierce market competition has also made some large-scale liquor enterprise groups come to the fore and formed a batch of liquor industry star enterprises headed by Wuliangye. For example, in 1998 Wuliangye produced more than 120,000 tons of white wine.
Last year, Wuliangye took the lead in packaging PET bottles on its high-occupancy Jianzhuang wine and achieved good results. This is a signal that the liquor market is opening the door for PET bottles.
But someone who first came out to eat crabs does not mean that someone will follow him to do that. It is still difficult to say whether liquor companies will or how many companies will follow the example of Wuliangye to switch to PET bottles. This is of course conceptual, but more importantly, PET bottle equipment manufacturers and professional manufacturers are required to perform more detailed and in-depth work.
In theory, PET bottles used for white wine are not technically more difficult to manufacture than carbonated drinks and mineral water bottles. Due to the bactericidal effect of alcohol itself, it should be said that PET bottles used for liquor packaging are not very demanding in quality requirements. However, if the benefits of using PET bottles are limited to reducing the breakage rate, it would be too simple to cause the wineries' interest. In today's fierce market competition, packaging has become a key to open the market. How to promote innovation in bottle design and structural changes, and to give play to the advantages of PET bottles in terms of color, molding and processing, is the key to further expanding the market. This requires equipment manufacturers and professional bottlers to strengthen communication with wineries.
In what way will the future liquor companies introduce PET bottle packaging?
Based on the experience of bottled water development and Wuliangye's pattern of exiting, it seems that Chinese liquor companies will also continue to use the procurement equipment to manufacture their own PET bottles. However, analysing the current status of liquor companies will find that the future direction is still uncertain. The reason is that Wuliangye is the leading enterprise in the liquor industry and its economic strength is far from what other companies can achieve. With tens of millions of investments, there are not many companies that can afford it. This can be seen from the sales revenue of the top 10 liquor companies in 1998.
National Liquor Liquor Sales Revenue in 1998 Enterprise sorting unit: 10,000 yuan Business name Sales revenue Sichuan Yibin Wuliangye Group Co., Ltd. 421334
Chengdu Quanxing Winery, Sichuan Province 145403
Anhui Gujing Group Co., Ltd. 134810
Anhui Seed Wine Factory 116210
Sichuan Jiannanchun Group Co., Ltd. 113402
Shandong Lanling Enterprise Group Corporation 90316
Anhui Weizhou Laojiao Co., Ltd. 82673
Sichuan Haopai Liquor Co., Ltd. 82130
Henan Yangyu Group Co., Ltd. 80013
China Guizhou Maotai Winery (Group) Co., Ltd. 73950
Therefore, it can be predicted that the development of PET bottles in the liquor market will be different from that of bottled water plants: Individual large-scale liquor companies will introduce PET bottle production equipment, and the remaining wineries interested in switching to PET bottles will use outsourced bottles. This is somewhat analogous to the situation in the early days of mineral water development in China. In addition, although Wuliangye has introduced advanced two-step equipments such as H USKY and SIDEL, for most companies, the one-step equipment with relatively low price will still be the first choice.
In addition to white wine, wine and wine companies are also targets for the development of the PET bottle market. Although the technical difficulty will be greater than that of white wine, it is still crucial how to make a breakthrough in the color and shape of the bottle.
III. Juices and tea beverages Non-carbonated beverages containing sugars, such as fruit juices, tea drinks, and milk, require containers to be sterile during filling to prevent contamination by microorganisms. The commonly used filling method is pasteurization in hot filling, ie the product is instantly heated to 120°C to 140°C for a few seconds and then cold.