Greening and low-carbonization of the injection molding industry

In recent years, the global injection molding equipment market has faced many challenges, but it has also spawned new opportunities. With the continuous strengthening of global carbon control policies, injection molding technology and equipment are ushering in green, low-carbon and intelligent changes, which puts higher demands on the industry.
The EU is expected to launch a digital product passport (DPP) from 2026 in response to its goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050 and its overall sustainable development strategy. Under this requirement, companies selling products in Europe will need to collect and share detailed data about their products and processes digitally. DPP requires information on the entire product life cycle, including the product's ingredients, origin, production and recyclability, aiming to achieve full processing transparency, unlock circularity and shape the future of the supply chain.

At present, the key directions for the injection molding industry to achieve green and low-carbon breakthroughs can be summarized into the following four aspects:
1. Development of product carbon footprint calculation platform
With the improvement of the industry's carbon footprint calculation system, the plastic product carbon footprint calculation platform will gradually become the standard in the injection molding industry. At the same time, the platform can provide an important data basis for energy consumption optimization solutions, which may become an important product demand in the injection molding equipment industry in the future.
2. Development of high-performance injection molding technology for composite materials
With the vigorous development of the new energy vehicle industry, composite injection molding processes represented by in-mold labeling, online mixing, and polyurethane one-step method have significantly reduced the processing links of plastic products compared to traditional processes, and can effectively reduce production energy consumption while improving product performance.

3. Development of recycling material processing technology
The changes in the molecular chain morphology of recycled materials result in significant differences in their processing performance compared to raw materials. Constructing an online quality monitoring and compensation method for injection molding through equipment structure innovation, control process innovation, etc. is a key means to improve the processing performance of recycled materials. It is also an important technology to improve the consistency of equipment molding quality.
4. Development of Digital Twin Intelligent Operation and Maintenance Platform

Kinetic energy/heat energy recovery technology is an important development direction for energy recovery of injection molding equipment in the future. Combined with artificial intelligence technology, energy consumption can be optimized for processing processes such as energy waste in mold trials, equipment failures/maintenance shutdowns, and factory scheduling, thereby improving the overall energy-saving level of the injection molding process.

Next, by summarizing the technological developments of global suppliers in recent years, the current industry dynamics of the injection molding industry will be elaborated in detail from the aspects of carbon accounting platform, composite injection molding technology, product quality control system, digital twin intelligent operation and maintenance, etc.