Thread Content
In recent years, efforts have been made to accelerate the structural adjustment of the food industry, promote its transformation and upgrading, and establish a modern food industry system with Chinese characteristics. As a result, the industry concentration in China’s food sector has **increased; enterprises have grown in size and production capacity, leading to higher demands regarding the production efficiency and degree of automation of equipment. Therefore, automated food production lines are facing greater market opportunities. The origin of assembly lines dates back to ancient times, but the truly modern assembly line originated in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. Today, there is a wide variety of conveyors available, suitable for material transportation in various types of industrial production. The pipeline is primarily used to transport its materials. In the area surrounding the warehouse, production workshops, and packaging workshops, there are various conveyor chains composed of many belt conveyors, roller conveyors, etc., which are connected end to end to form a continuous assembly line. At present, China’s economy is in a phase of rapid development, and the continuous improvement in industrial automation has spurred rapid growth in industries such as food, agricultural products, electronics, building materials, packaging, and logistics. The huge market demand from these downstream industries presents significant opportunities for the domestic light conveyor belt industry to develop. In 2010, the market demand for lightweight conveyor belts in our country exceeded 14 million square kilometers, with a market value of 1.685 billion yuan. In the coming years, China’s demand for lightweight conveyor belts will increase year by year. By 2014, China’s demand for such belts is expected to reach 20.51 million square meters, with the domestic market value reaching 2.876 billion yuan. Due to the labor shortage, the food industry has also put forward requirements regarding automated conveyor systems: firstly, such systems should be installed appropriately in areas for receiving goods, storage, picking, outbound inspection, and distribution; by utilizing information such as barcodes, they enable drugs to be delivered to their intended locations through powered conveyor systems, thus achieving automatic and continuous logistics transfer across all stages of the logistics center. The level of equipment is the foundation for the development of the food industry. The 12th Five-Year Plan for the food industry states that significant efforts must be made to increase the degree of domestic production of equipment, thereby raising the overall technical and equipment standards of the food industry. The focus is on making breakthroughs in key technologies and standards related to digital design and advanced manufacturing of food processing equipment, intelligent control and process monitoring, energy conservation and emission reduction, quality control, monitoring and testing, as well as safety and hygiene, in order to accelerate the process of achieving self-sufficiency in such equipment.