Author: Han Xiaoliang
Counsel and Senior Engineer, Beijing Institute of Printing Machinery, National Technical Committee on Printing Machinery Standardization; Editorial Board Member, Folding Carton Packaging magazine
In my professional lifetime, I have organized and participated in a number of local and international printing equipment exhibitions. With that in mind, the 2011 SinoFoldingCarton event, held at the Beijing International Exhibition Center, was highly impressive.
The five exhibition halls spanned a total area of over 20,000 sqm and the event featured numerous high profile companies, from China and abroad. This greatly contributed to the expansive scale and high quality of the show.
The advanced technologies displayed by local digital ink jet equipment manufacturers, showcased the Chinese ink jet printers used for electronic code monitoring of medicines. They also shone a spotlight on local advances in digital printing equipment.
New, high-end automatic packaging equipment for die cutting, hot stamping, folder gluing, paper cutting and laminating were also on full display. The items featured high levels of Chinese innovation and greatly enhanced the authoritativeness of the exhibition to members of the industry.
China’s printing and packaging trade used to focus on developing equipment to print only books, newspapers and commercial publications. As such, only government bodies were drawn to shows like these. At SinoFoldingCarton 2011, it was evident how diverse and much improved the equipment on display today is. Digital, automatic and mechanical printing and packaging equipment has replaced manual and semi-automatic machines.
The exhibition also illustrated a range of new trends. Technicians are gradually replacing general workers as operators of equipment as old folding carton machines are being replaced. This means the end of the era in which printing and packaging companies competed for cheap labor. Most exhibitors at SinoFoldingCarton were new, progressive, private companies from the new printing machinery sector. This means private companies are growing rapidly, thanks to the government’s subsidizing of small and medium-sized companies.