You may still remember that in the early 1980s, domestic factory workshops were still full of bulky semi-automatic equipment, and workers needed to manually fill, align and seal. At that time, the packaging machine was more of a mixture of "iron lumps" and manual labor than a machine. But as the wave of reform and opening up swept across the country, the industry quietly embarked on a journey of transformation.
In the early days of reform and opening up, the introduction of advanced packaging equipment from overseas allowed domestic companies to see the efficiency of fully automatic assembly lines for the first time. At that time, the masters in our factory were dismantling imported machines to "steal" and worrying about the price of these equipment, which was often millions of yuan, and domestic small and medium-sized enterprises could not afford it at all. But it was this gap that gave rise to the determination to upgrade local technology. In the late 1990s, domestic packaging machines began to break through the basic transmission structure, replacing cast iron parts with more durable alloy materials, and the application of servo motors improved the sealing accuracy to a level visible to the naked eye.
Entering the 21st century, customer demand has shifted from "usable" to "easy to use". I remember that in 2012, a Southeast Asian customer proposed to process three specifications of food packaging on a production line at the same time, which forced our R&D team to overcome modular design. Today's intelligent production line can switch production modes within ten minutes by simply changing molds and adjusting parameters. What is more proud is that the failure rate of domestic packaging machines has dropped from 3-5 times per month in the early days to less than 1 time per year, truly realizing "rest assured when starting up".
If technology is hard power, then standards are soft business cards. In the early years, when exporting equipment, European and American customers would always use a magnifying glass to check ISO certification. Now the situation has reversed-the "High-speed Pillow Packaging Machine Group Standard" we participated in formulating has been directly cited by industry associations in Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries. Behind this shift in discourse power is the deep cultivation of core technologies over the past 40 years: from heat sealing temperature control to visual inspection systems, every detail has been polished and formed in comparison with international giants.
Standing at a new historical node, we are clearer than ever: packaging machines are not only tools for container packaging, but also a microcosm of independent innovation in China's manufacturing industry. In the future, we will continue to use intelligence as an engine and work with global partners to enable more industries with packaging solutions made in China.
