Companies join official drive for rural vitalization

Parcel delivery companies have echoed the government's call to expand the network and provide quality services for rural areas to boost transportation of agricultural produce to urban areas, help farmers get richer and promote the State's strategic plan of rural vitalization.

Speaking during a teleconference with businesses last month, Ma Junsheng, head of the State Post Bureau of China, the national parcel delivery industry regulator, urged delivery companies to promote the expansion of the network to rural areas to improve the movement of goods from rural to urban areas.

In the past, You Changjiang and his wife often lost money when they grew the fruit in Northwest China's Shaanxi province because kiwis are difficult to store.

The couple planted the crop for 26 years in Shaanxi's Zhouzhi county, known nationally for its fine-tasting kiwi fruit. However, they saw baskets of kiwis rotting in the fields, which broke their hearts, because they lacked efficient channels to sell the fruit quickly but had nowhere to store and preserve their produce.

Last year, though, the more than 40,000 kilograms of kiwi fruit grown in their orchard were stored in a newly opened smart storage center directly after being picked.

The center, established by the local government and JD Logistics, a giant parcel delivery company, is located in neighboring Wugong county, less than an hour away by road.

The center can wash, store, inspect, categorize and wrap all types of fruit, and send the produce to customers nationwide. Fruit can be transported from the center to big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai in less than two days.

"I will no longer worry about my fruit rotting in the field," You said.

SF Express, another giant parcel delivery company, has made efforts to cut transportation times to retain the freshness of agricultural produce.

It has used its own resources, such as all-cargo flights and cold-chain trucks, to transport the goods.

During this year's litchi harvest season, the company built large transfer hubs and storage centers in Hainan province and the western part of Guangdong province to boost the efficiency of parcel deliveries. It also cooperated with high-speed railways to ease the pressure on peak time transportation, and added more cold-chain trucks to ensure the rapid movement of produce to keep the goods fresh.

In the eastern province of Shandong, the company linked production areas, sales platforms and parcel delivery services to promote the sale of cherries. The next step will be to continue promoting the fruit in Shandong's Yantai and Qingdao and help to establish their brand, the company said.

It will also assist agricultural and other produce from the area, such as apples, peaches and seafood, to go nationwide.

The company also made specialized packaging for litchis in Maoming, Guangdong, to aid promotion of the product's brand, and it provides financial subsidies in some regions to facilitate the movement of agricultural produce.

ZTO Express, a major parcel delivery enterprise, has established a "lighthouse" project to build a source-tracking system for selected agricultural produce, recording the processing of products from paddy fields to storage, delivery and sales.

To make the process transparent and reliable, the data is open to all the companies involved.