Four of the hottest beverage packaging markets

Beverage packaging market: four quarters of the world

at present, the annual output of China's beverage market has reached about 24million tons, of which carbonated beverages account for about 30%; Bottled drinking water accounts for about 30%; Fruit juice and fruit juice drinks account for about 10%; Tea drinks account for about 5%. In recent years, the technology and equipment level of China's beverage packaging industry has made a qualitative leap. It has introduced the international advanced two-piece cans production line and filling line in the 1990s; PET bottle, Tetra Pak, Kangmei bag and other disposable flexible packaging production lines; Glass bottle and polyester bottle filling lines of various specifications and models; Concentrated fruit juice and purified water production line; High pressure sterilization equipment and other beverage production equipment. At the same time, the global partners of beverage machinery manufacturing countries are hot, and the pace of production has been greatly accelerated. The selection of cans, plastic bottles and composite flexible packaging materials has been basically based on the domestic market, and the market demand for beverage packaging is growing rapidly. Beverage packaging market pattern: polyester, paper, metal and glass containers "divide the world"

at present, China's beverage packaging is divided by the materials used, mainly including polyester bottles (PET), metal cans, paper plastic composite packaging, glass bottles and other packaging forms. The proportion of various packaging forms is about 30% for glass bottles, 30% for polyester bottles, nearly 20% for two pieces of aluminum cans, and about 10% for three pieces of cans and paper plastic composites

1. PET bottle packaging

pet bottle packaging has become a trend of beverage packaging today. In terms of the market share of major beverage countries in the world, PET bottles account for more than 70% of the four major beverages, including carbonated beverages, fruit juice, tea drinks and bottled water. China is also in the high-speed development stage of PET beverage packaging, and the demand for polyester bottles for packaging is increasing by two digits every year. PET bottles account for 57.4% of the domestic carbonated beverage packaging, while carbonated beverages account for about 46% of the total output of soft drinks. It can be seen that polyester bottle packaging has occupied the main share of the domestic beverage packaging market

the domestic tea beverage market has sprung up, and the output has increased rapidly from 200000 tons in 1997 to millions of tons in recent years. As tea drinks are required to be hot filled at 85 ℃ to 90 ℃, and the heat-resistant temperature of PET bottles used for hot canning can reach about 95 ℃, hot filled PET bottles for tea drinks have become the fastest-growing variety of PET bottles, with an annual growth rate of more than 50%

beer packaging is another huge potential market for polyester bottles. At present, a considerable number of breweries in the United States, Britain, Japan and other countries have adopted polyester bottle packaging. Guangdong Zhongfu company, the largest beer bottle manufacturer in China, has adopted the technology of Kirin company and began to plan to produce multi-layer PET bottles. A nationwide distribution plan has been launched. The driving force of PET bottled beer consumption comes from its higher safety than glass bottles, and its competitive advantage in price. Due to the short consumption cycle of beer, breweries can use PET packaging without considering other high barrier containers with high cost. The reason why pet packaged beverages are popular is that they have some advantages that other beverage packaging forms do not have. For example, consumers think that PET bottled beverages have a large amount, are transparent, intuitive, light and easy to open, can be refrigerated, easy to carry, strong and recyclable, all of which provide a broader prospect for the development of PET bottled beverages

2. Paper container packaging

the early paper packaging of beverages used base paper containers. Packaging materials are generally high-strength raw cardboard. The thickness of base paper and pulp material vary depending on the type and size of the container. For example, large cartons with a capacity of 500ml to 1000ml mostly use thick cardboard, and mainly use the raw pulp of coniferous trees with long fibers and high stiffness, so as to prevent the box body from bulging and damaging the appearance during storage. For small cartons from 150ml to 200ml, the container is soft, so thin cardboard can be used, and the pulp of broad-leaved trees can be used. Tetra Pak brick cartons were originally developed as milk containers. Now they are widely used in the packaging of fruit and vegetable juice, cool drinks, wine and other drinks. Tetra Pak brick cartons can be seen everywhere in the European market. This new type of "paper wine" is safe and quality guaranteed; There is no danger of damage, breakage or explosion; Easy to carry, open and display. At the same time, Tetra Pak brick carton packaging composed of six layers of composite materials also has the sealing required by bottled wine, which can prevent alcohol from penetrating and volatilizing, and has the advantages of acid proof and light proof, so it is favored by the market. It is reported that the world consumes more than 100 billion carton aseptic packaging every year. The average annual consumption of carton packaged beverages in developed countries is dozens of packages, while that in China is only more than one package. In the fields of milk, tea drinks, vegetable juice, wine, traditional Chinese medicine and so on, the market development space of brick carton packaging in China is very broad. The combined tank is a new type of 3-piece tank. The tank body material is composed of polypropylene, aluminum foil and hard cardboard, which is formed by flat winding method or spiral winding method. Generally speaking, combined cans are limited to the packaging of low acid beverages such as fruit juice. Compared with metal cans, the combined cans have the advantages of light weight, low cost and less rust. As a paper container, the tightness of the combined tank is not as good as that of the metal tank, which is not suitable for high-pressure sterilization

3. Metal can packaging

metal cans are still used as handwheel and dispensing handwheel to check whether each part is a beverage packaging container widely used in the market, which is due to the surge in the consumption of canned beverages and beer in recent years. At present, about 410billion metal cans are produced in the world every year, including about 320billion beverage cans. The consumption of canned beverages in China has increased from 57.4 billion in 1992 to 100 billion annually in recent years. At present, China's metal can packaging market has shown a trend of supply exceeding demand, but from the analysis of per capita consumption, there is still a large market space, and the key to developing the market is to reduce the cost of metal cans

in order to reduce costs, the foreign can industry has generally adopted two ways: thinning the thickness of aluminum plate and improving the shape of can. For each 0.01mm thinner aluminum plate used in American cans, about US $0.22 can be saved per thousand cans; Reducing the opening neck of easy opening cover from 404 specification to 401 specification can save 12.5% of materials; The tank necks from 206 to 204 gauge B? d  The full set of lattice can save 6.7% of the material consumption, and then reduce to 202 specification can save 13.6%. These practices can be used for reference by the domestic tank industry

the technology of empty metal packaging cans in China has approached the international level. At present, we should vigorously promote the use of ultra-thin tinplate and aluminum, carry out technological transformation and develop new products. In addition, efforts should also be made to improve product quality and solve the most important quality problems of beverage cans, such as leaking cans, easy to open covers and easy to damage pull rings

4. Glass bottle packaging

at present, a large number of glass bottle packaging are still used in domestic beer production. In the field of beer packaging, glass bottles account for about 36% of the market share. In the packaging of fruit juice drinks, the use of glass bottles is decreasing. Glass bottles, like other packages, are constantly impacted by the discrete nature of data from PET bottles. However, many market participants believe that PET bottles cannot occupy all the markets in some aspects from the perspective of the beverage market as a whole, especially in the high-quality soft drinks and beer market, there are still a large number of goods using glass bottles as packaging containers, which also shows that there is a diversified trend in the development of beverage packaging

the new technology of beverage packaging is changing with each passing day: sterile packaging and freezing technology account for "half of the country"

1 Aseptic packaging technology

at present, with the continuous updating of sterilization technology, aseptic packaging technology is gradually getting rid of the traditional mode and developing towards a new sterilization method. For example, nowadays, the combination of high-intensity ultraviolet light and low concentration hydrogen peroxide is often used to sterilize the packaging containers. The bactericidal efficacy of hydrogen peroxide with a concentration of less than 1% and high-intensity ultraviolet light at room temperature is 100 times that of the two alone. Because the concentration of hydrogen peroxide is very low, there is no need to take measures for the residual hydrogen peroxide, which avoids the problems of high temperature and long time for traditional hydrogen peroxide sterilization. Another example is to combine UHT sterilization method with retention sterilization method to conduct secondary sterilization of bottled milk. It is to heat and sterilize milk in UHT sterilizer under the conditions of 130 ℃ to 150 ℃ and 0.5s to 15s, bottle and cover it, and then maintain sterilization at 110 ℃ to 116 ℃ for 15min to 20min. As the milk is basically sterile after UHT sterilization, the heating intensity to maintain sterilization can be significantly reduced, and the flavor and color of the products can be significantly improved. There is also ultra-high pressure sterilization technology, which is to sterilize the product under the pressure of more than 500MPa for a period of time. You may not have heard of it. It kills most or all of the microorganisms and inactivates the enzyme activity, so as to achieve the purpose of preserving food. Because the pressure of hundreds of MPA will not raise the temperature of food, there is no deterioration of color, aroma, taste and nutrients, and the original flavor of food can be retained more

2. Cold filling technology

aseptic cold filling has been considered as a feasible alternative to hot filling in recent years. From the perspective of filling technology, the traditional hot filling can be divided into two types: one is high-temperature hot filling, and the other is pasteurization by heating the product to 65 ℃ to 75 ℃ after low-temperature filling. These two methods do not need to sterilize the product, bottle and cover separately, but only keep the product at high temperature for a long enough time to sterilize the bottle and cover. Aseptic cold filling first needs to sterilize the product, bottle and cover respectively, and then fill in the aseptic environment until it is completely sealed before the bear leaves the aseptic environment

from the comparison of the two process flow charts, UHT ultra-high temperature instant sterilization is adopted for aseptic cold filling, the heat treatment time of materials is not more than 30s, and the sterilization effect can be fully guaranteed under high temperature conditions; The sterilization method used in hot filling makes the materials stay at high temperature for a long time, which will affect the quality, taste and color of the products to a certain extent, and most hot filling beverages are added with preservatives

the two filling methods have different requirements for PET bottles. The hot filling process requires that PET bottles can withstand high temperatures above 92 ℃ without deformation, which requires increasing the crystallinity of PET materials. At the same time, the generation of induced stress should be limited during bottle blowing, which limits the freedom of bottle design. Aseptic cold filling uses light bottles (the maximum heat-resistant temperature is 60 ℃) and standard caps, which reduces the cost of bottles and caps, and allows more freedom to choose and design bottle types. There are also great differences in the input costs of the production lines of the two filling methods. The bottle blowing machine used for aseptic cold filling has fast bottle blowing speed and low power consumption; However, the blowing speed of the hot filling bottle blowing machine is relatively slow and the power consumption is large. Under the same production capacity, the investment is three times that of the cold filling bottle blowing machine. Aseptic cold filling process is complex, and there are many filling auxiliary equipment. Overall, the initial investment of a sterile filling production line is higher than that of a hot filling production line. In terms of raw material cost, the weight of the two bottles is very different. Aseptic cold filling can save raw materials to reduce costs. In terms of operation cost, aseptic cold filling is also much lower

in a word, aseptic cold filling products have the following advantages: they are safer to use, and aseptic cold filling products absolutely do not contain preservatives and any other additives; The taste is better, fresher, and the color is more colorful, which maintains the natural delicious and beautiful color of the fruit to the greatest extent