Yiwu's Success with Import Mode

      “Many thanks to the Bonded Logistics Center for arranging another 10,000 m² of warehouse to us in time. Otherwise, the original storage we had could not have handled the ‘shopping fever’ of our customers,” a director of the Cainiao (Tmall International) warehouse of Yiwu Bonded Logistics Center said. “The transaction data of Singles'Day was excellent. All the parcels are packaged and dispatched in order.” While he was speaking, the warehouse was noisy and crowded with hundreds of busy staff members sorting and packing. Once the packed parcels were sent outside, the staff waiting there quickly loaded the trucks with numerous packages.

      According to statistics, on Singles'Day (aka Double 11—November 11), Yiwu Customs oversaw 13.33339 million orders, marking a good start for the first Singles'Day with the cross-border e-commerce bonded import mode (code of customs supervision mode: 1210).

      The import mode, also known as stockpiling mode, is a strategy whereby the e-commerce platform first purchases a large number of goods from abroad based on market forecasts and consumer demand, then stores these imported goods in a special area under the supervision of China Customs. Finally, they deliver them to the customers according to orders. Compared with the traditional mode, this one is much better regarding customs clearance efficiency, product quality, and cost performance.

      The Yiwu Bonded Logistics Center covers an area of about 130,000 m², with a rentable area of 75,000 m². The newly built landport bonded warehouse, with a rentable area of 30,000 m², was put into operation on October 19, 2019. On January 1, the launch day of the cross-border e-commerce bonded import business, Yiwu was in the forefront of the third batch of China's cross-border e-commerce integrated experimental zones with 10,278 orders a day. Since then, its business volume has shown steady growth. The goods have expanded from diapers only to covering more than 5,500 categories, including beauty care, maternal and child products, food and health products, and luxury appliances. Since September, the daily average inspection and release of cross-border bonded import orders of Yiwu Customs has increased from the initial 2000 orders to about 33,000, reaching a peak of 1.33 million on Singles'Day.

      “From November 11-15, the average daily shipment volume of Beiling cross-border warehouses is expected to reach 350,000 orders, which is 20 times usual volume,” said Hong Yufeng, warehouse manager of Yiwu Beiling Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd.

      Fully establishing import mode for cross-border e-commerce as the new normal will be a major task of Yiwu's next steps. Since the beginning of this year, as the main operator of Yiwu Bonded Logistics Center, the Yiwu Landport Group has developed the cross-border e-commerce bonded import business, and has introduced 50 companies and platforms of cross-border e-commerce such as Cainiao (Tmall International), Koala, Yunji, and BeiBei. The categories have increased from 43 to 1200. Furthermore, Yunji was listed in the NASDAQ in May. 

(By Xia Binting, translated by Li Ziyi, edited by Kendra Fiddler)