"Kingdom of plastic products" Taizhou will rise industry environmental revolution

In recent years, consumers at home and abroad have higher and higher requirements for the safety and environmental protection of kitchen utensils. A revolution of "environmental protection materials" is quietly rising in Taizhou plastic commodity industry. Taizhou is known as the "Kingdom of Plastic Products", and the national market share of plastic daily necessities is as high as 60%.

With the rising cost of raw materials and labor year by year and the continuous rise of RMB exchange rate, Taizhou's export of plastic kitchen utensils has maintained a growth rate of more than 20% for four consecutive years. In 2012, the export volume reached 0.35 billion billion US dollars, ranking in the forefront of all major producing areas in China. A few days ago, we walked into Taizhou plastic export enterprises and listened to them talk about the "business experience" of technological innovation driving the transformation of the plastic industry ".

A material revolution.

Du Fu once praised bamboo with the poem "Rain Wash Juanjuan and Clean, Wind Blows Fine Fragrance". For a long time, bamboo has been a gentleman in the hearts of Chinese literati. Today, bamboo has become an environmentally friendly, safe and degradable raw material for kitchen utensils, taken from nature and returned to nature.

At the Canton Fair in May this year, more than 20 products such as bamboo fiber stainless steel thermos cups newly developed by Taizhou Huangyan Xinlianhe Plastic Products Co., Ltd. shone brilliantly. In the words of the company's general manager Huang Keliang: "It has attracted attention. I also got orders, very successful!"

In 2009, Xinlianhe first tried to produce kitchen utensils with bamboo fiber, a new biodegradable and environmentally friendly material. At that time, the first generation of products could only be made into simple pallet type, and the color was single, which was difficult to satisfy customers. More importantly, the technical problem of product shrinkage and deformation had not been solved. Huang Keliang recalled: "The first generation of products lost miserably, and cars burned down. We stayed in the factory to study the material ratio during the Spring Festival that year."

Technology not pass is a prominent problem that plagues private small and medium-sized enterprises. After learning about the situation, Zhejiang Taizhou Inspection and Quarantine Bureau guided enterprises to learn from the production process of bamboo powder flowerpot, implement technical improvement, and send the proofing products to the laboratory for testing in time. After more than 2 months of hard work, the problem of high moisture content and easy deformation of bamboo powder was overcome, and the scrap rate of the product was effectively reduced. The following year, the product passed the US FDA food inspection and the EU LFGB food safety inspection.

After experiencing the pain of the destruction of the whole car after the failure of the first generation of products, and also experiencing the joy of the fifth generation of products laughing at the Canton Fair, the research and development of bamboo fiber kitchen utensils in Xinlianhe has gone smoothly and successfully realized the transformation from traditional melamine kitchen utensils to new environmentally friendly kitchen utensils.

How is the market response to this new environmentally friendly material? Huang Keliang said with emotion: "In 10 years of running the factory, I have never received a single order for more than 9 million before; last year, we received a single order for 9 million, which shows the popularity of bamboo fiber products."

In the first five months of this year, Xinlian and bamboo fiber kitchen utensils were exported, with a total of 92 batches worth 2.6752 million US dollars, up 24.3 percent and 51.3 percent respectively over the same period last year. The proportion of exports in total exports rose from 47.8 percent in 2012 to 71.9 percent in 2013.

Promote "machine substitution"

At present, the single spark of mechanization has become a prairie fire in Taizhou disposable plastic kitchenware enterprises.

"From the international financial crisis to the present, labor costs alone have increased by 100, and now the annual increase is more than 10%." Jinxing Industry and Trade Co., Ltd. is a plastic enterprise specializing in the production of disposable knives, forks and spoons. General Manager Lin Wenjin told us, "It was difficult to recruit workers in 2009, so we tried to install manipulators." That year, the factory invested more than 100 million yuan and installed more than 20 manipulators.

Entering the production workshop, the "big guy" we saw was the "central integrated feeding system" developed by the factory for 5 years. it can inject raw materials into 20 machines at the same time through pipelines. after the injection molding machine processes the raw materials, the product is taken out by a mechanical arm about 2 meters high and placed on the packaging platform for an average of 13 seconds each time.

"Now, we only need a dozen people in the raw material class. It used to need more than 40 people. According to the per capita 40000 yuan a year, 10 people can save 400000 yuan." Lin Wenjin told us that the cost of equipping the equipment has long been recovered, and more importantly, "machine replacement" is of great help to ensure product consistency and quality stability.

In Taizhou yichi industry and trade co., ltd, another disposable plastic kitchen utensils manufacturer, in addition to the central integrated feeding system and manipulator, we found that there were two more long conveyor belts in the production workshop, which connected each production equipment like a road and transported the products to the packaging place in a centralized way, thus eliminating the time for manual handling.

According to general manager Liang Zhi, the production capacity has increased by 60% ~ 100 in recent years, which is not only due to the role of the manipulator, but also the credit of technological innovation, mainly the use of hot runner molds.

Both Jinxing Industry and Trade and Yichi Industry and Trade are very concerned about the new technological trends in the industry. At the Asia-Pacific Rubber and Plastic Exhibition, the world's second largest industry exhibition, the latest technologies such as "analog labeling" and "quick mold change" have attracted Liang Zhi's attention; and Lin Wenjin is also actively contacting foreign customers and going to Japanese trade fairs to see equipment, hoping to find machines with higher production capacity and faster speed. Their next goal is to realize the mechanization of packaging as soon as possible.

Run to the Highland of Dreams

It took 8 years of persistent exploration and a total investment of 15 million yuan to develop a new type of environmentally friendly polylactic acid kitchen utensils. For an ordinary private enterprise, this persistence is particularly precious.

In Zhejiang Xiangguang New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., General Manager Fang Yong picked up a pink polylactic acid salad bowl and told us: "This bowl can be completely degraded in 6 months in the natural environment, and his profit It is three times that of ordinary kitchen utensils".

Traditional petroleum-based plastic materials such as PP, PC, melamine are more or less plasticizer, bisphenol A and other security risks, in recent years, the European Union and other testing standards for such kitchen utensils are becoming increasingly strict, and even directly banned. Fang Yong told us, "the detection of toxic substances in polylactic acid is 0 or negative, which is an absolutely safe material." But he reluctantly said, "We are the earliest and most complete polylactic acid kitchen utensils in the industry. Unfortunately, customers see more and buy less of this new product, and orders are small, but we will not give up."

What supports this persistence is an ideal. Talking about this ideal, Fang Yong is a little excited: "China rarely stands at the commanding heights of the world in any field. Polylactic acid material is the world leader. If downstream enterprises can make good use of this material, they can also stand on the commanding heights!"

Only by standing on the high ground can we have pricing power. Without pricing power, it is the pain in the hearts of Fang Yong's factory and even tens of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises in China. "My biggest expectation is to fight a turnaround through polylactic acid kitchen utensils, change the way of trade with foreign businessmen, and ask him to be my seller abroad. The price is set by me."

The road of innovation is full of rugged. In order to support export enterprises, Taizhou Bureau gives full play to its advantages in information and technology to help enterprises analyze the properties of new materials and potential risks in the production process. Aiming at the categories of new materials such as bamboo powder, polylactic acid (PLA), PBT polyester and their additives, it compares and consults the authorization status and limit requirements of such substances in the EU authorized substance list to provide technical guarantee for their further investment in the EU market, put an end to the economic losses caused by blind development and production.