Packaging / Advertising & Office

In recent years, with the "home economy" and the accelerated pace of modern life in the post-epidemic era, ready-to-eat, instant-heated, and ready-to-cook pre-cooked dishes have quickly emerged and have become the new favorites on the dining table. According to the "Research Report on the Development Trend of China's Prefabricated Vegetable Industry in 2022", the market size of China's prefabricated vegetables will be 345.9 billion yuan in 2021, and it is expected to maintain a growth rate of more than 20%. close.

At present, the prefabricated vegetable economy is entering a period of rapid growth, and all parts of the country are scrambling to make arrangements at the policy level. In fact, pre-made dishes have not only become a new competition in the catering industry, but their packaging has also heated up the injection molding market—thin-wall injection molding.

As the name implies, compared with traditional injection molding, thin-wall injection molding is much thinner in the wall thickness of the product, but the more core or professional difference is the difference in flow length ratio. When the flow/wall thickness ratio (flow length ratio) is greater than 150 , it can be called thin-wall injection molding. For large auto parts, "thin wall" can be a concept of 2mm. Thin-walling has become a research and development hotspot in the plastic molding industry due to its advantages of reducing product weight and external dimensions, facilitating integrated design and assembly, shortening production cycles, saving materials and reducing costs.

Due to the unique shape characteristics, thin-walled injection molding has different requirements in the selection of raw materials, product design, machine selection, mold manufacturing and molding process. The five key points are interlinked. All in all, thin-walled injection molding machines are often inseparable from high-speed injection molding machines, and thin-walled products need to change the processing technology: higher pressure and speed, shorter cooling time, and changing part ejection and gate arrangement.

Following the trend of thin-wall packaging of prefabricated vegetables, many plastic machine companies have innovated and upgraded the injection molding solutions for thin-wall packaging.

Yizumi——Thin-wall forming technology helps the industry to grow and develop

With years of technical accumulation, Yizumi is committed to becoming the best cost-effective system solution provider in the thin-wall packaging field, helping the development and growth of the pre-prepared vegetable industry. It is understood that Yizumi's high-speed packaging system can provide thin-wall forming equipment and molds. The thin-wall forming equipment is mainly PAC and PAC-K3 series models. There are mature thin-wall food packaging boxes, disposable lunch boxes, spoons, etc. The thin-walled product production solution can provide more choices for the packaging of prefabricated vegetables.

Liansheng Precision Machinery - the fifth-generation single-cylinder injection molding machine and special injection molding machine for thin-wall packaging

Liansheng has been deeply involved in the field of injection molding equipment manufacturing for nearly 20 years. At present, its fifth-generation single-cylinder injection molding machine and special injection molding machine for thin-wall packaging can provide solutions such as disposable lunch boxes, disposable tableware, and thin-wall packaging lunch boxes. In addition, in the face of more packaging needs and solutions, Liansheng's special injection molding machine for thin-wall packaging can also provide tableware injection molding and degradable injection molding solutions. As a new type of polymeric material, degradable plastics will greatly reduce environmental pollution when green packaging and low-carbon energy conservation are advocated.

It is worth mentioning that at the upcoming K 2022 on October 19, 2022, ENGEL will present a solution jointly with ALPLA (ALPLA), Brink and IPB printing companies - one-step molding of rPET thin-walled containers. It is reported that ENGEL specially developed the e-speed 280/50 injection molding machine to meet the high performance requirements of thin-wall injection molding. This is a hybrid model with both electrical clamping and hydraulic injection units.

In 2022, ENGEL has once again increased the power of this series of machines. This model achieves injection speeds of 1400 mm per second at a maximum injection pressure of up to 2600 bar when achieving small injection volumes with extremely high wall thickness to runner ratios. In order to facilitate the processing of rPET, ENGEL has also equipped the model with a self-developed plasticizing unit, which is specially used for processing recycled materials. The new ENGEL e-speed injection molding machine supports the processing of any recycled material up to 100% rPET.

With the increasing subdivision of prefabricated food categories, the large demand for packaging brought by prefabricated food products has also provided a new outlet for the development of the thin-walled injection molding industry. Thin-wall injection molding will also continue to break the limit in terms of thinner thickness, higher efficiency, higher precision and lower cost. In order to seize the huge business opportunities in the prefabricated vegetable packaging market, we will wait and see what innovative equipment and processes will be introduced in the thin-walled injection molding industry in the future!