China's express delivery to the sea is booming: faster, farther, more varieties

Embroidery wedding dress from Huqiu, "Caoxian" horse skirt, "domestic" intelligent water purifier, etc., are becoming attractive single products in the eyes of global consumers.

According to a recent research report released by HSBC, Chinese e-commerce companies are actively expanding overseas markets and seeking new growth. It is estimated that the e-commerce market outside China will grow to $3.376 trillion by 2025, with the most opportunity markets including the United States, Western Europe, South Korea, ASEAN, and Latin America. The GMV of China's e-commerce in overseas markets will reach 500 billion US dollars in 2025, which means that China's e-commerce has huge prospects for overseas development.

According to the preliminary calculation of the General Administration of Customs, the total import and export volume of cross-border e-commerce in China in 2023 reached 2.38 trillion yuan, an increase of 15.6%, of which exports reached 1.83 trillion yuan, an increase of 19.6%. The rapid development of cross-border e-commerce helps China's products reach the world, and is also an important driving force for the development of foreign trade.

With the arrival of the 328th anniversary of the first heavy promotion of the year launched by cross-border e-commerce represented by AliExpress, since the warm-up of a week in advance, the price war and the aging war of cross-border e-commerce have quietly started.

"Logistics" and "business flow" have always been mutually successful. With cross-border e-commerce to the sea together with express companies, SF Express, Cainiao, ZTO, YTO and other express companies have joined the sea army, through land, rail, air freight and other forms of domestic goods and Chinese solutions to the sea, in the overseas show their strength at the same time is also fierce.

　　Links to more countries and regions

From the point and surface, continuous in-depth links to more countries and regions are becoming a must for express companies to go to sea.

As an important layout of Cainiao's overseas business, Cainiao announced on March 19 that its "global 5-day" cross-border e-commerce express delivery was upgraded again. In the previous joint Express to Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and other countries to take the lead in the implementation of the "global 5-day" business, it will further upgrade the service to include Germany, France, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Mexico and other countries of the core market, to achieve more than 10 countries worldwide "mass production" service capabilities.

In addition to European countries, countries accompanying the construction of the "Belt and Road" are also important options for Chinese express delivery companies.

At 10 o 'clock on March 17, a B757-200F cargo plane loaded with 24.6 tons of electronic cigarettes and processed raw materials, operated by YTO Airlines, took off from Lanzhou Zhongchuan International Airport and flew to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, marking the official opening of the first international cargo route in Lanzhou New Area in 2024. The route, which is scheduled to fly twice a week, is the 19th international cargo route opened in Lanzhou New Area and the second cargo route for Central Asian countries.

Not only that, ZTO International is also sending domestic agricultural products to Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries jointly building the "Belt and Road" through the China-Laos railway.

The State Post Bureau mentioned in the "China Express Development Index Report from January to February 2024" that the cross-border transportation network of Chinese express delivery enterprises continues to be encrypted. The company's own airlines opened "Ezhou = Lahore (Pakistan)", "Wenzhou = Hanoi (Vietnam)", "Shenzhen = Clark (Philippines)" and other international routes, effectively promoting trade between China and Pakistan, Southeast Asia and other regions. Chinese express delivery companies have cooperated with international freight train companies to launch China-Russia cross-border special trains and carry out end-to-end and door-to-door cross-border logistics services, providing a strong guarantee for "Made in China" to go abroad.

　　Prescription is an important starting point

In recent years, the four e-commerce platforms SHEIN, AliExpress, Temu and TikTok, known as the "four small dragons" by domestic sellers, have become the main force of China's cross-border e-commerce. And they also rely on their own advantages, become a cross-border e-commerce field can not be ignored.

In fact, in the cross-border e-commerce trading chain, logistics is one of the most complex links. From domestic collection to end distribution, cross-border logistics involves many links, and its cost accounts for more than 20% of the entire cross-border e-commerce operation. Some sellers said that every 1 day increase in the performance limitation of e-commerce packages (more than 7 days later) will increase the proportion of returns by 2%.

Therefore, the continuous improvement of China's express delivery capacity is also helping cross-border e-commerce to go to sea.

For example, AliExpress brings considerable business flow to Cainiao with its platform advantages, rapidly accumulates deep knowledge of consumer markets in various countries, and builds a global smart logistics network; At the same time, Cainiao creates efficient and stable cross-border express products for AliExpress to further enhance consumers' commodity re-purchase and satisfaction.

"We want to build the Global 5-Day Delivery into a global flash for cross-border merchants." Ding Hongwei, vice president of Cainiao Group and general manager of international express, introduced that logistics timeliness is an important breakthrough to drive cross-border e-commerce platforms to improve single volume. For consumers, logistics timeliness is one of the key factors to consider whether to re-purchase or not. For the e-commerce platform, efficient logistics helps to shape the differentiation advantage of the platform and break the problem of homogeneity.

Australia is one of the most successful "model rooms" of YTO Express. Last year, the newly opened YTO China-Australia e-commerce line cross-border e-commerce packages have grown rapidly, and the effectiveness and services are at the forefront of the market. Yto's strategy is to rely on the huge domestic express delivery network to achieve rapid cargo collection, complete the warehouse operation through the cross-border warehouse located in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Dongguan and other places, and board the flight at the corresponding port, which is at least 2 days faster than the merchant's spontaneous cargo.

　　The categories are more diversified and rich

It is worth mentioning that the State Post Bureau also mentioned that the international service capacity of express delivery enterprises continues to increase. Express delivery enterprises explore the cross-border transportation of oversized and super-heavy materials and equipment to provide professional support for domestic manufacturing enterprises to build factories abroad; Cooperate with cross-border e-commerce platforms to open China-South Korea oversized delivery lines, help furniture, home appliances and other businesses to explore the South Korean market, and enrich cross-border e-commerce sales categories.

Driven by the "Belt and Road" initiative, high-tech value-added domestic manufacturing enterprises began to build factories in a systematic, planned and organized way. However, in the process of building the plant, the amount of materials required is large, the cross-border transportation distance is far, the logistics operation links are many, and the professional requirements are high, and the negligence of any details may cause the delay of the entire project, which also puts forward new requirements for the international engineering logistics of the guarantee project.

At the beginning of February, YTO Express international supply chain set up a factory in Indonesia for domestic manufacturing enterprises to complete the first batch of material transportation. It is reported that the project transported more than 30,000 tons of materials, including gantry cranes, bulldozers, forklifts, generators, box-type transformers and other large, super-heavy engineering materials and equipment, starting from Fujian, to the construction site 4,000 kilometers away in southwest Kalimantan province, Indonesia.

For the difficulty of this logistics, YTO international supply chain related project leader made a very image of the example, "It is like putting more than 6,000 elephants together, cross-border transport more than 4,000 kilometers, to the infrastructure is not yet developed in developing countries."

Therefore, engineering logistics going to sea not only tests the "hard power" of special parts transportation of supply chain enterprises, but also the comprehensive test of "soft power" such as resource integration and deployment.

For express companies to go to sea, not only to help the goods go to sea, the solution to go to sea has become another new opportunity.

Recently, Cainiao signed a cooperation agreement with B2B cross-border trade distribution channel Spotter. Cainiao will give play to its leading advantages in digital supply chain, provide Spotter with a new generation of intelligent warehouse management system, help its overseas warehouse to build a standard and efficient warehouse management system, and jointly help Chinese brands go overseas.

This is also another result of Cainiao Logistics Technology going to sea after launching scientific and technological cooperation with Daraz, FlashExpress and other enterprises. The relevant person in charge of logistics technology business of Cainiao Group said that next, while delivering Spotter WMS project well, Cainiao will continue to output digital supply chain and other capabilities, push self-developed WMS software and other products to more enterprises, and help digital construction of more industries.

(Author: Fei Xinyi)