Nearly half of the orders are placed by the United States! Customs exploring cross-border e-commerce charter flight supervision, Pudong Airport exports over 1 million packages per day for e-commerce | Cross border | Customs
Describing the growth rate of cross-border e-commerce at Shanghai Airport Port as "crazy" seems perfectly fitting.
Song Geyouji, Deputy Director of the Customs Express Supervision Department at Pudong Airport, stated that three years ago, Pudong Airport launched the first month of the "Cross border E-commerce B2B Export" pilot program, with a total declared vote count of 300000. But now, 300000 tickets can be achieved in just a few hours, with "over a million tickets per day easily." Data shows that in the first eight months of this year, the number of cross-border e-commerce declared by Pudong Airport Customs reached 261 million, of which 40.64 million were in August. With the upcoming shopping seasons of "Double 11" and "Black Friday", it is just around the corner to see over 50 million tickets sold in a single month within the year.
Jieli's warehouse is filled with exported cross-border e-commerce goods.
Shanghai Airport handles a massive amount of cross-border e-commerce goods every day.
The rise of the new generation of cross-border e-commerce
Unlike mainstream bulk trade goods measured in tons, cross-border e-commerce measured in small packages has become popular in recent years with advantages such as "small, fast, and agile", becoming a bright spot in the high-quality development of Shanghai's foreign trade. The global COVID-19 has catalyzed the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce. Overseas consumers are increasingly accustomed to staying at home, placing orders online, and paying electronically. The high cost performance of Chinese products is still the main reason for their addiction to "cutting hands". From January to August this year, over 95% of the cross-border e-commerce declarations made by Pudong Airport Customs were for exports, with an average value of approximately 200 yuan per shipment. From the perspective of export destination countries, the United States accounts for nearly 50% of the value of goods, with the Netherlands and the United Kingdom ranking second and third in purchasing power. Interestingly, both houses of Congress in the United States have faced a legislative proposal aimed at curbing the flow of e-commerce imports, especially those from China, by eliminating tariffs and tax exemptions on goods worth less than $800 for individual consumers. However, in the face of the overwhelming demand and empirical evidence from American consumers who love to buy Chinese goods, this legislative proposal has never been discussed.
Jieli Freight exports a large amount of goods at Pudong Airport every day.
It is reported that there are over a million cross-border e-commerce packages at Shanghai Airport every day, corresponding not only to "first generation" cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay, but also a massive number of orders from emerging giants. SHEIN, a low-key and mysterious fast fashion e-commerce unicorn, was founded in 2012. Through on-demand production and a flexible supply chain model of "small order quick response", with digital capabilities and strong standard output, it empowers a large number of clothing factories in China and achieves global sales of Chinese clothing. As of the end of last year, SHEIN had entered over 150 countries worldwide with a user base of up to 150 million, making it the world's most downloaded shopping app. In August of this year, SHEIN also acquired about one-third of the equity of SPARC Group, a well-known fashion retail group in the United States. SPARC Group operates brands such as Forever21, Brooks Brothers, and Reebok.
Overseas users posted pictures on social networks claiming to be addicted to SHEIN.
SHEIN's shipping warehouse.
In addition to SHEIN, there are also new cross-border e-commerce forces such as Temu, Shopee, Lazada, etc. Temu comes from Pinduoduo, while Shopee and Lazada are two major e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia. However, Shopee's largest shareholder is Tencent, while Lazada is controlled by Alibaba.
The supply chain behind the scenes is truly fragrant
The rapid rise of these new cross-border e-commerce forces relies on the strong support of the supply chain. Among them, local supply chains such as Cainiao International, DiSifang, Yida, and Jieli Freight have grown rapidly, and continuously replicate Chinese inventions and standards overseas.
For example, Jieli Freight has a clever way of combining orders. Jieli's smart transportation warehouse located in Qingpu covers an area of 12000 square meters, showcasing the level of foreign addiction to Chinese goods - headbands, glasses, clothing, DSLR lenses, floor scrubbers, massage chairs, and even a two meter long cloth pole.
A cloth pole over two meters long has also been added to the foreigner's shopping cart.
According to the assistant to the president of Jieli Freight, experienced overseas consumers often place orders on three or four platforms and often purchase more than ten different items. If these products are individually packaged and sent overseas, the postage is obviously not economical enough. Jieli understands the pain points and provides thoughtful "consolidation" services, which means that regardless of which platform the buyer places an order on, they can choose to send it to the Jieli consolidation warehouse first, and the buyer can track the status of the package in real time. After all or part of the purchased goods are received, the buyer can choose to "merge payment". After paying the consolidation shipping fee, the Qingpu consolidation warehouse will handle the "consolidation" process. As a result, more than ten small packages were consolidated into one large package and delivered overseas in the most economical way possible. This has become the confidence for buyers to confidently purchase Chinese made products in bulk.
In addition, the widely used terms of performance time and free shipping prices in China have also begun to go abroad. Jieli Freight has achieved a full chain service of "warehouse dry cleaning and distribution" for a certain route in Southeast Asia, which means that the entire process of warehouse, trunk line, customs clearance, distribution, etc. is independently controllable. As a result, Jieli has confidence in promising customers a "T+2" time limit and promising to compensate for any late arrivals. Among them, "T+5" will compensate for three times the shipping cost, and the full value of the goods will be compensated after two weeks of exceeding the promised delivery time. This type of performance time limit quickly spread to the industry. Diyi International, a Shanghai based company, promises a "T+7" delivery time for its dedicated lines to the UK and Germany, while Cainiao International offers "10 day delivery for $5" and "Cross border 5-day delivery between China and South Korea" to European consumers.
The plan to export to China is also reflected in the fact that some cross-border logistics suppliers in Shanghai have started to expand their presence in Southeast Asia, working together with local convenience stores such as FamilyMart and 7-11. Local end delivery companies will deliver the goods to the store, and then C-end buyers will be asked to pick them up at the nearest store. The self pickup cabinets with dense domestic layout in China have also been extended overseas by Cainiao. Recently, Cainiao International and DHL, the German postal DHL group, announced that DHL will acquire a partial stake in Cainiao's Polish subsidiary. The two sides plan to jointly invest 60 million euros in the first phase to further expand the coverage of smart self pickup networks. As the first step of cooperation, Cainiao and DHL will jointly operate the existing 1200 sets of self pickup cabinets. DHL's data shows that the e-commerce market in Poland is expected to double in size by 2027, with 40% of consumers preferring to use self pickup containers to pick up packages.
New bottlenecks are constantly being overcome
At present, the scale of cross-border e-commerce exports at Shanghai Port ranks among the top three in the country, with air freight being the main export channel. Song Ge believes that the dense routes, flight prices, and port service efficiency of Shanghai Airport are significant advantages.
He told reporters that cross-border e-commerce business is growing rapidly, and customs supervision relying solely on manpower is clearly not enough. Starting from May 2021, Pudong Airport Customs will achieve full electronic approval and release of cross-border e-commerce exports. Wang Wenjiang, General Manager of Shanghai Yida International Logistics Co., Ltd., has a deep understanding of this. Shanghai Yida mainly provides cross-border logistics solutions for platforms such as SHEIN and AliExpress. Customs clearance is concentrated at 10am and 12pm every day. In the era of manual document review before 2021, a large number of customs declarations at 12pm could only be delayed for one night, and will be manually processed when the customs officers come to work the next morning. After the full process of electronic approval and release for cross-border e-commerce exports is implemented, the system conducts logical control and automatic discrimination, and automatically triggers release for eligible customs declarations. "In this way, logistics companies can declare and export goods at night, which truly conforms to the logistics operation law of cross-border e-commerce, which operates 24/7," said Wang Wenjiang.
Jieli Freight Smart Warehouse.
It is reported that in order to support the sustained and rapid development of cross-border e-commerce as a new trade format, Pudong Airport Customs has also collaborated with relevant departments to conduct research in advance to address new problems and bottlenecks in development. For example, currently there are signs of charter flights for cross-border e-commerce exports, and Shanghai Yida has achieved 88 charter flights for export in the first half of this year. Pudong Airport Customs is taking this as a topic and exploring more convenient and targeted customs supervision services under the trend of normalized charter flights for supply chain enterprises in the future. For example, in terms of cross-border e-commerce imports, Cainiao International has encountered difficulties in the import and return process of certain specific goods. Shanghai Customs has set up a research group to actively explore "empty entry and sea return" solutions and strive to open up new channels for cross-border e-commerce returns.
