The overseas warehouse allows overseas customers to experience the "China speed" by receiving the goods within two days of placing an order.
2024-08-07
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This article is reprinted from [People's Daily WeChat Official Account];
The "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reforms and Promoting Chinese-style Modernization" reviewed and adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to "deepen foreign trade system reform" and "support various entities to orderly layout overseas circulation facilities."
Since the beginning of this year, my country's cross-border e-commerce trade has continued to grow steadily. Cross-border e-commerce and new foreign trade infrastructure such as overseas warehouses work together to reduce intermediate links, reach consumers directly, and promote the optimization of foreign trade structure and the stability of scale.
The picture shows a panoramic view of the automated operations of the grain warehouse overseas in Düsseldorf.
Photo by Li Haoyang
Data source: General Administration of Customs, etc.
Map: Wang Zheping
At 8:30 a.m. local time, in front of the door of Warehouse 3 of the Granary Overseas Warehouse in Düsseldorf, Germany, rows of container trucks were lined up neatly, waiting to be unloaded and put into storage. Warehouse Manager Shi Lei quickly walked into the office, changed into his work clothes, and assessed the workload for the day.
At 9 o'clock in the morning meeting, the personnel required for each process were assigned, and the day's work began.
At 9:40, the first truck was ready to go. "The goods on this truck will be sent to various parts of Germany and neighboring countries through the transshipment center." Shi Lei said that the positioning and function of the overseas warehouse are very clear, and it is an important logistics node connecting the domestic and international supply chains.
With overseas warehouses, the efficiency of foreign trade companies going overseas is greatly improved.
Logistics time has been shortened exponentially. In the past, merchants prepared goods in China, and then sent them from China to the final destination after the customer placed an order. Even if it was transported by air, it would take 5 to 10 days to reach Germany. Now, by preparing goods in advance at overseas warehouses, parcels sent to Berlin can be delivered the next day or the day after leaving the warehouse, which is comparable to the domestic logistics time efficiency.
The overall cost has dropped significantly. "Foreign trade cross-border warehousing and logistics can be roughly divided into three sections. The first leg is port-to-port transportation, the middle is overseas storage, and the last leg is overseas door-to-door delivery." Shi Lei introduced that the first leg generally uses container shipping, which can carry a large amount of goods at one time, thereby reducing the unit freight. Overseas warehousing improves operating efficiency and inventory turnover through refined operations and customized warehouses and professional warehouse services, thereby reducing costs. Because the goods are closer to the end consumers, the distribution link, especially the multi-warehouse combination distribution cost, is lower; and large overseas warehouses have strong bargaining power with local terminal distribution service providers, further reducing the overall operating costs.
The service chain is more complete. Difficulty in returning goods is a major problem that plagues foreign trade companies. Overseas warehouses have effectively solved this problem. Take clothing exports, which have a high frequency of returns and exchanges, as an example. If there is no overseas warehouse as a fulcrum, returns involve the import of goods, and the process is long and troublesome. Many merchants choose to give up returning goods, resulting in a waste of resources. Now they only need to return the goods to overseas warehouses and then redeploy them.
At present, competition in the international trade market is becoming increasingly fierce. How can we help foreign trade companies cultivate new competitive advantages?
Granary divides storage areas into standard, intelligent, high-value, and large-sized categories, and different types of storage conditions and management methods are different. Taking large-sized items as an example, in order to meet customers' delivery needs in multiple online and offline scenarios, Granary builds its own truck distribution capacity; in the intelligent warehouse, large-load lifting robots and box-type storage robots work together in the same field, doubling the operating efficiency. During the peak season last year, the outbound capacity of the German intelligent warehouse reached an average daily peak of 20,000 orders.
"Our goal is to become an 'end-to-end' fulfillment supply chain comprehensive service provider." Chen Huahui, general manager of Granary Overseas Warehouse, introduced that in recent years, Granary Overseas Warehouse has expanded its domestic business of picking up and collecting goods, trunk transportation, customs clearance and declaration, while continuing to optimize overseas truck services, improving trunk and terminal delivery capabilities, reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
Today, Granary has a total of 170,000 square meters of overseas warehouses in Germany. In the first half of this year, more than 4 million parcels were shipped out of the warehouse, an increase of about 40% year-on-year. Looking at the world, "We have established more than 1.6 million square meters of self-operated overseas warehouses in more than 30 countries, serving more than 20,000 corporate customers." Chen Huahui said.
At 5:30 p.m., when all the work in the warehouse was completed, Shi Lei returned to the office to take inventory: "All outbound orders have been cleared daily. This is our most relaxing moment."
Further reading
Overseas warehouses connect dots into lines and weave lines into a network
People's Daily reporter Luo Shanshan
In June this year, the Ministry of Commerce and other departments issued the "Opinions on Expanding Cross-border E-commerce Exports and Promoting the Construction of Overseas Warehouses", proposing to "promote the high-quality development of cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses". Data shows that my country has built more than 2,500 overseas warehouses with an area of more than 30 million square meters. As an important node in cross-border trade and overseas logistics, overseas warehouses are entering the fast lane of development, opening up the "last mile" for enterprises to go overseas.
Overseas warehouses, as the name implies, are warehouses located in overseas markets. Transforming from a single warehousing function to an "end-to-end" full-link integrated service, overseas warehouse companies are constantly improving their service networks. With the vigorous development of cross-border e-commerce, consumers have higher requirements for logistics fulfillment timeliness. By establishing warehousing points close to terminal consumer markets, goods can be prepared in advance in overseas warehouses, achieving rapid distribution and turnover of cross-border goods in overseas markets, and improving the "last mile" layout of cross-border e-commerce logistics.
In recent years, as overseas warehouse companies continue to innovate and optimize their services, overseas warehouses are no longer just "stocking points", but also a new type of foreign trade infrastructure with comprehensive service functions, and an important part of the foreign trade supply chain. Some overseas warehouses can provide multiple services such as exhibitions, after-sales, and maintenance for overseas companies. For example, Yiwu Mall Group has established overseas warehouses in Dubai, Mexico and other places, adopting the "overseas warehouse + exhibition hall" "front exhibition and back warehouse" operation model. There are also some overseas warehouse companies that expand the first-leg collection logistics services to the domestic end, and build a closed-loop service system from foreign trade exporters to importers.
Today, overseas warehouses scattered around the world are connected into lines and networks, crossing mountains and seas to open up new routes to the sea. The latest data released by the General Administration of Customs shows that in the first half of this year, my country's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports reached 1.22 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.5%, 4.4 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate of my country's foreign trade in the same period. From 1.06 trillion yuan in 2018 to 2.38 trillion yuan in 2023, my country's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports have increased 1.2 times in five years.
In order to improve the efficiency of logistics turnover, many overseas warehouse companies are accelerating their intelligent and digital transformation. The storage and delivery of goods involves a large amount of information entry and goods handling. Some warehouses handle tens of thousands of outbound orders per day. In order to achieve orderly order allocation, management is not easy. The information-based intelligent platform can realize the real-time collection, transmission and processing of goods information. Combined with big data analysis, the system can predict the sales trend and inventory demand of goods, and carry out inventory allocation and replenishment in advance. This not only ensures the timely supply of goods, but also avoids the risk of inventory backlog and unsalable goods. In the sorting and distribution links, robots and automated sorting equipment can handle a large number of orders efficiently, stably and accurately.
In the interview, some companies expressed their new expectations for the high-quality development of overseas warehouses. Among them, standardization construction is a high-frequency word. The combination of "cross-border e-commerce + overseas warehouses" has fostered new momentum for foreign trade development, but it is still a new thing. It still requires relevant departments, industry associations, and companies to jointly explore, improve industry standards and norms, guide overseas warehouse companies to develop legally and in compliance with regulations, and better help Chinese companies go global.
Published in People's Daily, 2024.8.5, Page 2 People's Daily reporter Luo Shanshan
