In the early morning of the industrial zone of Kuala Lumpur, the roar of machinery one after another penetrated the mist. On the assembly line of a food processing plant, two newly invested vertical packaging machines are packaging shrimp chips at a speed of 120 bags per minute. Operator Chen Weiming wiped the sweat from his forehead and sighed: "Since the replacement of this set of automated packaging equipment, the number of night shift workers has been reduced from 12 to 5."
Such scenes are being staged simultaneously in many countries in Southeast Asia. As an overseas account manager of the ply-pack packaging machine factory, I have recently traveled frequently to and from industrial parks in Indonesia and Vietnam, and have personally felt the significant changes in the demand for packaging machines in Southeast Asia. At a customer forum in Jakarta, representatives from seven food and beverage companies all proposed: "We need a customized solution that can handle five types of bag sizes at the same time."
This change in demand has directly promoted the progress of our technology research and development. In response to the prominent multi-category and small-batch characteristics of Southeast Asian packaging machine needs, the engineering team has innovatively developed a modular combination system. Through a standardized base with replaceable functional components, customers can use basic equipment to achieve packaging conversion of 23 products such as puffed food, instant coffee, and frozen seafood. This technology has achieved a monthly saving of 30% in consumables loss in a leading company in the Philippines.
It is worth noting that intelligent production lines are becoming a core element to meet the needs of Southeast Asian packaging machines. In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the complete line solution we built for a multinational beverage group is not only equipped with a visual inspection system and a cloud management platform, but also shortens the equipment maintenance response time from 72 hours to 8 hours through a localized parts supply network. Nguyen Van Hieu, the purchasing director of the group, specifically pointed out: "The special high temperature and high humidity environment in Southeast Asia places strict requirements on the stability of equipment, and targeted technical adaptation is necessary."
From the 47 projects recently contacted, the food and beverage industry accounts for 68% of the demand for packaging machines in Southeast Asia, of which the demand for equipment involving halal food certification has increased by 41% year-on-year. To this end, we have set up a cross-departmental service team to establish a full-process technical standard system from the selection of stainless steel materials for equipment to the halal certification of lubricants. A halal biscuit manufacturer in Thailand particularly praised during the acceptance: "Your engineers even took into account the production specification requirements in the design of conveyor belt gap dust removal."
At the Bangkok dock in the twilight, containers with the ply-pack logo are being hoisted onto ocean-going cargo ships. Through the reflection of the customs glass, I saw my work badge glowing in the sunset, and suddenly understood why more and more Southeast Asian customers said: "When choosing a partner, you should not only look at the equipment parameters, but also see whether they have the same anxiety and expectations as us."
