Dutch Verbruggen Palletizing Solutions (VPS) will enter a partnership with Chinese Ningbo Diamond Packaging Technology and Manter International to launch a pilot packhouse in China.
The project will be lead by VPS and Diamond Packaging. VPS is a Dutch machine manufacture that specialises in the design and production of palletizing machines. The company is keen to enter the Chinese packaging market with its palletizing machinery. Diamond Packaging is a successful producers and exporter of mesh packaging solutions. Having mainly focused on export markets in the past, the company wants to increase its presence on the Chinese domestic market.
“Currently in China, most agriculture products like potatoes or onions are transported in bulk instead of bags. When transported in bulk, generally 30% of fresh produce transported gets lost due to rot and bad treatment. If the goods, such as potato, onion, carrot, cabbage, citrus, could be packed in bags and palletised, these losses would be prevented. Another advantage of packaging and palletizing, compared to transport in bulk, is that consumers cannot trace the origin of the product. Traceability is becoming more important on a market plagued by food scandals and soil and water pollution,” explains Ning Fan, VPS’s sale representative in China.
"For the past few years, Chinese consumers have been progressively consuming more. Their awareness of food safety has also gradually increased. When people are shopping for fruits and vegetables, they hope to find out information like the place of origin, sowing time, and whether or not a product is organic by just looking at the label,” adds Shi Lei of Diamond Packaging. “This is the kind of information that our mesh packaging solutions can convey to the consumer, and that is why we are increasingly targeting the domestic market.
“Packing and transporting in bags instead of in bulk maintains and prolongs quality, facilitates easier storage and transport and makes it possible to trace the products back to their origin,” summarises Ning Fan.
“In order to show these features to our clients, we are planning to open a pilot packhouse in China. Farmers will be able to send their raw products to the packhouse, where the produce will be sorted, washed, dried, graded, weight, packed and labelled. After that, different bags will be palletised and wrapped, easy for transport. Packhouses in Europe do this kind of work after purchasing the produce from the farmer, or in cooperation with the farmer.”
“We have now decided on the location of the new packhouse. We are focusing our presence on agriculture provinces, such as Shandong in Eastern China, Inner Mongolia in the Northwest or Xinjiang province. Farmers and growers will be invited to make use of our packaging and palletizing facilities in return for a small fee. When the product is packed and prepared, farmers will be able to sell it at higher prices on the market and they will be able to earn back their investment; a win-win situation for all parties. ”
