Early on the morning of October 6, general merchandise and home appliances from Yiwu Qunfa Trading Co. were loaded onto a heavy truck at the Yiwu Futian Logistics Park, heading for Ningbo-Zhoushan Port. More than 20 days later, they will appear on shelves in supermarkets in the United Arab Emirates and other countries.
A reporter counting at the park gate counted more than ten trucks entering and exiting in the short span of one minute. "We're in the peak freight season now, with about 8,000 vehicles entering and leaving the park daily," said a representative of the park operator, Yiwu Commerce and Logistics Port Co.
Since the second phase came into use in mid-September, the park has attracted a cluster of trade and logistics enterprises, building a bridge for manufacturers across the country to go overseas.
In a 7,000-square-meter warehouse on the second floor of Building A5, buyers from Central Asia are selecting goods while livestream hosts rapidly recite product information. "We were the first company to move in, and we merged several warehouses inside and outside the province," said Yu Liang, head of Qunfa. Since arriving in Yiwu, the company has expanded from pure domestic sales into overseas markets, with warehousing and display upstairs and shipping downstairs, which noticeably improved turnover while reducing labor and logistics costs.
Yiwu Qiancheng Home Furnishing took three floors at once — one for offices, one to display its self-produced premium kitchen and bathroom products, and one laid out like a large supermarket with tens of thousands of small commodities. The company, originally from Ningbo and focused solely on overseas furniture markets, saw an opportunity after the sixth-generation market opened and moved into Yiwu's home-ware category, already securing a first order worth one million yuan from a supermarket in an Americas market.
Zhejiang is a major foreign trade province, with total exports reaching 3.03 trillion yuan in the first eight months of this year, ranking third nationally. Yiwu's foreign trade exports remain the highest among all counties, cities and districts nationwide, setting a record for the same period.
The Futian Logistics Park serves as the yardage for this inland port, located less than 8 kilometers from the Yiwu (Suxi) International Hub Port, allowing goods to reach rail in as little as half an hour for shipment to Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, or to travel via the Yiwu rail port onto China-Europe freight trains bound for Central Asia and Europe. It is also close to the Yiwu express (cross-border) supervision center, enabling TIR cross-border road transport to move goods out of the country.
The park's reach continues to expand. In April, the Yiwu International Land Port Group set up an industrial belt hinterland warehouse in Nankang District, Ganzhou, Jiangxi, allowing local products to be consolidated and shipped rapidly to Yiwu via the land port express line. On September 28, Yiwu's first state-owned self-operated border warehouse in Manzhouli officially opened, allowing goods destined for Russia to be consolidated and exported by logistics enterprises based in the Futian Logistics Park.
"The larger the aggregation scale, the lower the consolidation and shipping cost, and the faster the logistics. That's one of the values of a hub," park representatives explained. The model addresses the slow turnover and high costs caused by the many-small-scattered nature of small commodity orders.
