At present, China's pharmaceutical packaging industry faces many problems. First, large foreign companies have targeted the Chinese market, and are gradually entering China and gradually occupying the high-end product market; At the same time, China's products have repeatedly been blocked from entering the international market, and suffered from European and American anti-dumping or technical barriers. In addition, our products have the problems of low grade, high energy consumption, serious low-level repeated construction, vicious competition in product prices, and poor ability to withstand market competition risks. At the same time, China's enterprises have weak technology research and development capabilities, insufficient investment in research and development funds, and lack of products with independent intellectual property rights. And as the country increases the governance of medical institutions and drug sales misconduct, there is a downward trend in drug prices, which will affect the packaging industry to a certain extent.

With the reform of China's medical system, the pharmaceutical packaging is out of order and the backward situation will change fundamentally. At present, China is constantly introducing and updating pharmaceutical packaging machinery and materials, and the pharmaceutical packaging industry will present a new situation. The diversification of drug types also brings diversification to the form of medical packaging. In recent years, the packaging of solid drugs in China, such as plain tablets, capsules, injections, and externally applied drugs, has been updated rapidly. At the same time, the use of disposable plastic syringes has brought a major change to the packaging and application of injections in China. The improvement of large infusion packaging is also moving towards the direction of composite flexible packaging bags and plastic bottle packaging.

1. Overview of the development of pharmaceutical packaging industry

In recent years, the pharmaceutical industry has fully realized the importance of packaging design. In addition to the increasing government investment in medical and health care, China's pharmaceutical packaging market will usher in a rapid growth, with an annual growth rate of more than 10%. Its GDP has accounted for more than 10% of the GDP of the national packaging industry, higher than the proportion of the pharmaceutical industry in the national total industrial output value. In recent years, with the implementation of the new version of GMP, the industry has put forward new requirements for the hardware equipment of pharmaceutical enterprises, which has achieved the growth of a number of pharmaceutical equipment enterprises, and has also become an opportunity for the upgrading of the pharmaceutical packaging material industry.

From the development of the past two years, the large-scale production of pharmaceutical enterprises has become more and more obvious, and the level is also gradually improving. A development trend of modern pharmaceutical enterprises is that larger pharmaceutical factories are equipped with packaging enterprises themselves. At present, the extensive growth with high speed, low efficiency and high consumption is a typical feature of China's pharmaceutical packaging development. The packaging quality of most domestic pharmaceutical products is low, and there is still a big gap with developed countries. At present, 65% of China's pharmaceutical packaging products are not up to the level of the international developed countries in the 1980s. The quality of packaging materials and the contribution rate of packaging to the pharmaceutical industry are low. In developed countries, medical packaging accounts for 30% of the drug value, while the proportion in China is less than 10%. At present, for the large domestic pharmaceutical packaging enterprises, there is little difference in equipment compared with foreign countries, but the software environment is very unsatisfactory.

From the perspective of drug production enterprises in all provinces of the country, they are also developing at a relatively fast speed. The speed of mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry has accelerated. Taking the whole country as an example, it was revised that large pharmaceutical enterprises, such as the pharmaceutical industry, realized the restructuring of pharmaceutical enterprises at the rate of purchasing 3 to 4 small pharmaceutical factories every year. Taking Jiangxi Province as an example, Renhe Group is expanding at the rate of acquiring one or two companies every year. Such a development speed will put forward higher requirements for the production capacity and product quality of pharmaceutical packaging enterprises. The change of demand in the external market will promote the development of pharmaceutical packaging in China towards the direction of scale, which will pose a great challenge to pharmaceutical packaging enterprises.

In recent years, due to the growth of domestic and international market demand, the production scale of the domestic drug packaging industry has also been expanding, which has promoted the increasingly fierce competition among drug packaging enterprises, and the speed of profit growth has also been significantly slow. Some drug packaging enterprises with poor management and unclear strategic objectives have begun to lose money, and most drug packaging enterprises are facing a new breakthrough. How to break through the existing "bottleneck" and go further is a problem faced by all drug packaging enterprises.

2. Difficulties and challenges faced by China's pharmaceutical packaging industry

While the pharmaceutical packaging industry continues to develop, it also gradually highlights some problems, such as weak independent innovation ability, insufficient research on the compatibility of packaging and drugs, and as a sub industry of the pharmaceutical industry, it is suffering from various pressures from downstream, such as the "low price is the only choice" in the bidding of essential drugs, the implementation of the Pharmaceutical Production Quality Management Standards, and so on.

(1) Weak independent innovation ability

Pharmaceutical packaging is a multi-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary industry, involving glass, plastic, chemical and other disciplines. However, due to the small size of the industry, it is difficult to attract some large scientific research institutions and professionals to pay more attention to research and development projects in pharmaceutical packaging related fields. The phenomenon of lack of high-level and sophisticated talents in the pharmaceutical packaging industry is obvious. The overall strength of China's drug packaging materials industry is still weak, most of which are small in scale and low in management level. The low-level repeated construction of low-end products is serious, the development and application of new products and technologies are insufficient, and the quality standards and system construction are still incomplete. Compared with developed countries, there is still a considerable gap in drug packaging in China. For example, the use of drug name and batch number is not standardized, the use of drug label is inconsistent with the quality standard, and the use of terms is not standardized.

(2) The compatibility of packaging and drugs is a challenge to be solved

With the increasing awareness of consumers on medical safety and the frequent occurrence of medical safety accidents in recent years, the compatibility of packaging and drugs has begun to attract the common attention of the pharmaceutical industry and the pharmaceutical packaging industry. Compatibility between packaging and drugs refers to that the drugs are not adsorbed and the packaging does not migrate within a certain period of time when the drugs are stored in the packaging, otherwise the drugs will react with the packaging to a certain extent, which will cause the drugs to lose their original functions and even cause negative effects. In the next five years, China's pharmaceutical packaging industry will focus on the development of new, environmentally friendly, biodegradable and convenient pharmaceutical packaging materials and containers. Accordingly, the production of special raw and auxiliary materials for packaging materials will be upgraded.

3. Development Trend of Pharmaceutical Packaging Industry

The GDP of China's pharmaceutical packaging industry has accounted for more than 10% of the GDP of the national packaging industry, which is much higher than the proportion of the entire pharmaceutical industry in the total industrial output value of the country. Today, new products and new pharmaceutical types emerge in endlessly, and the market space of China's pharmaceutical packaging industry is broad. However, there is still a certain gap between the pharmaceutical packaging industry in developed countries and the level where it accounts for more than 30% of the total output value of the pharmaceutical industry. New dosage forms of drugs emerge one after another, while the matching drug packaging materials are still slow to follow up, which has great potential to be tapped.

With the implementation of the new version of GMP, new requirements have been put forward for the hardware and equipment of pharmaceutical enterprises, which has achieved the growth of a number of pharmaceutical equipment enterprises and an opportunity to upgrade the pharmaceutical packaging material industry. The pharmaceutical industry has fully realized the importance of good packaging design to increase the life and attractiveness of the brand. The industry believes that pharmaceutical enterprises must innovate and improve efficiency to deal with the growing threat of counterfeit drugs. Therefore, pharmaceutical enterprises will increasingly demand the pharmaceutical packaging market. At the same time, with the continuous improvement of Chinese residents' living standards and health concepts, and the increasing government investment in medical and health care, China's pharmaceutical packaging market will usher in a rapid growth in the future.

4. Impact of upstream and downstream on industry development

The profit of the pharmaceutical packaging industry is affected by the upstream raw material price and the downstream market demand.

The upstream industries are mainly chemical industry and aluminum foil processing industry. The chemical raw materials needed by enterprises are closely related to the international crude oil price, and the rise of crude oil price will increase the production cost of pharmaceutical packaging enterprises. Downstream industries that have demand for the pharmaceutical packaging industry mainly include pharmaceutical industries such as chemical raw materials, chemical pharmaceutical preparations, Chinese patent medicines and biopharmaceuticals. The development of the downstream pharmaceutical industry faces a favorable domestic environment, with rapid growth of market demand, increased national support for the pharmaceutical industry, continuous improvement of the quality standard system and management norms, and abundant social capital, which are conducive to the stable and rapid development of the industry, thus promoting the rapid development of the upstream pharmaceutical packaging industry, mainly reflected in:

(1) Rapid growth of pharmaceutical demand, driving the development of pharmaceutical packaging industry

Due to population growth, accelerated aging process, continuously improved medical insurance system, enhanced residents' ability to pay, and gradually released people's increasing health needs, China has become one of the regions with the fastest growth rate of drug consumption in the world, and is expected to become the world's second largest drug market after the United States by 2020. Deepening the reform of the medical and health system requires the gradual establishment of a public health service system, a medical service system, a medical security system and a drug supply security system covering urban and rural residents, and the formation of a four in one basic medical and health system to provide the masses with safe, effective, convenient and inexpensive medical and health services. This will further expand consumer demand and improve the level of drug use, bringing opportunities for the development of China's pharmaceutical industry.

(2) Improve the quality and safety requirements of downstream drugs, and promote the upgrading of the pharmaceutical packaging industry

The "Action Plan for the Improvement of National Drug Standards" promoted by the State Food and Drug Administration has been carried out in an orderly manner. The new version of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia has significantly improved the drug safety testing standards. The procedures for drug registration and application have been further standardized. The monitoring of adverse reactions and drug reevaluation have been strengthened. The new version of the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) has been formally implemented. The electronic drug supervision system has been gradually established, All of them put forward higher requirements for the quality of drug production, which is conducive to improving the level of drug quality and safety, thus promoting the orderly competition and survival of the fittest in the upstream pharmaceutical packaging industry.

With the reform and development of China's capital market, the scale of venture capital and private equity investment continues to expand, and medicine has become one of the industries that benefit the most. More and more pharmaceutical enterprises have raised funds through the capital market, creating conditions for technological innovation, market expansion, merger and reorganization, and the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, strongly supporting pharmaceutical technological innovation activities, and driving the development of the pharmaceutical packaging industry.