SW China highway logistics base revs up int'l trade

CHONGQING, April 14 (Xinhua) -- China's leading retailer JD.com has taken advantage of a booming highway freight service in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality to promote its same-day delivery service of thousands of varieties of imported goods to Chinese consumers.

Wang Jing, manager of the southwest warehouse of JD Worldwide, the company's online platform for imported products, said the company's logistic base in Banan District, Chongqing, recorded 7,000 orders for consumer products on average daily since the beginning of this year, most of which are maternal and childcare products, dietary supplements and cosmetics.

Launched in April 2016, the cross-border highway freight service with Chongqing as a domestic hub provides timely delivery of goods, promoting trade between western China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

A truck departing from Chongqing, which crosses the border via the land checkpoint of Mohan in Yunnan Province, takes four days to arrive in Vientiane, Laos, traveling about 2,800 km.

The highway logistics base in Chongqing offers not only a cross-border highway freight service, but also bonded logistics warehouses and a wholesale center for ASEAN products.

The JD Worldwide warehouse in Chongqing has aggregated about 320 e-shops supplying more than 3,300 varieties of products.

JD.com and China's leading courier enterprise SF Express are among more than 70 trade and logistics firms that have settled in the base, which has a cumulative market turnover of about 433.4 billion yuan (about 62.9 billion U.S. dollars).

As of March 31 this year, 11 cross-border highway freight service routes had been launched, linking Chongqing with over 30 cities in Southeast Asia and parts of South and Central Asia.

In addition to imports, Chinese exports of automobile and motorcycle parts, laptops and fruits are transported to ASEAN countries via the highway freight network, which also offers 34 overseas distribution warehouses.

"Prior to the cross-border highway freight service, it took about a month for our cargo to reach ASEAN countries via water transport," said Ding Shunli, general manager with Chongqing Shunjunyi Import and Export Trading Co., Ltd.

Ding said the highway passage has accelerated the expansion of the company into an international trade company.

"Over the weekend at the end of March, the company saw 56 trucks carrying goods departing for Laos and Myanmar," said Ding, adding that the company's business network reaches several large and medium-sized cities in China and Southeast Asian countries, and that the company is exploring the import business potential of fruits and medicinal materials.

The company plans to build overseas warehouses in Laos, Thailand and Myanmar to further expand its market network by integrating sales, maintenance and warehousing.

During the first quarter of this year, 1,306 truck trips using the highway network transported goods worth about 991 million yuan, surging 316 percent and 394 percent year on year, respectively. The service delivered 2,939 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers with a total cargo weight of 28,100 tonnes.