What does "The First Town of Express Delivery" rely on?, From the smell of organic fertilizer floating in the air to the birth of a billion dollar industrial cluster
The road is bumpy, with many broken ends, and the smell of soil and organic fertilizer wafts from outside the car windows - more than a decade ago in spring, Zhang Jianfeng, Vice President of Zhongtong Express Group, visited Huaxin Industrial Park in Qingpu, Shanghai for the first time and was deeply impressed by this "vibrant" atmosphere. At that time, the headquarters of Zhongtong Express had just landed in Huaxin, and the industrial facilities in the old industrial park were old, with rapeseed flowers blooming vigorously in the peripheral farmland.
More than a decade has passed, and Huaxin Town is no longer what it used to be. The first billion level industrial cluster in Qingpu has emerged here - the express logistics industry. In addition, there is a billion level high-end manufacturing industry mainly focused on automotive parts, as well as a billion level high-tech industry including semiconductor chips, biopharmaceuticals and other "new tracks".
The tremendous changes in Huaxin are certainly inseparable from the many major strategies carried by Qingpu District in recent years. But aside from these, the story of Huaxin still makes people curious: why is Huaxin the "number one express delivery town" in so many towns across the country? How did Huaxin and the express delivery industry, express delivery industry, and other industries in the town achieve mutual success?
From "Disadvantage" to "Advantage"
The administrative map of Qingpu presents an east-west butterfly shape, and Huaxin Town is located on the east wing of this butterfly, adjacent to Jiading and Minhang. You may have never been to Huaxin, or even heard of it, but as long as you have had online shopping experience, your package is likely to have been to Huaxin.
Over the past 10 years, more than 300 express logistics companies have gathered here in Huaxin Town, including the national headquarters of Zhongtong, Yuantong, Yunda, and Jitu. There is a saying in the industry that out of every 10 express deliveries nationwide, 7 are carried by express delivery companies headquartered in Huaxin. Last year, the revenue of Qingpu express logistics industry was 156.8 billion yuan, accounting for 85% of the city's revenue and 14.8% of the national revenue, with the vast majority coming from Huaxin Town.
Jitu Express
Why do express logistics companies favor Huaxin so much? Industrial development requires many resource elements, including land, location, talent, policies, and supporting public facilities. The advantages and disadvantages of these resource elements sometimes need to be viewed dialectically: each industry and even every enterprise value different "points", and from different perspectives, the "advantages and disadvantages" of resource elements can often be transformed. Disadvantages, changing perspectives, companies, and industries, are sometimes strengths.
Huaxin's "disadvantage" is obvious - remote. This town is far from the center of Shanghai and even the regional center of Qingpu, not in the hinterland of Qingpu New City. For traditional industries, such a location is difficult to rapidly gain momentum. In the early years, traditional manufacturing was the pillar industry of Huaxin Town. By the end of 2000, nearly a hundred industrial enterprises had settled in Huaxin, including "star" enterprises such as Xindazhou Motorcycles. But it cannot be denied that the output value and level of most enterprises are not high.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the tertiary industry gradually emerged in the suburbs of Shanghai, and the priority of manufacturing in urban development was once "lowered". Xu Qing, the president of the Huaxin Town Chamber of Commerce, told reporters that at that time, the people of Huaxin were somewhat confused: whether to develop the manufacturing industry in the future? Development without seeing future momentum; Without development, what else can be developed besides manufacturing?
A turning point quickly emerged - e-commerce platforms represented by Taobao quickly emerged, bringing a large amount of express logistics business; In October 2009, China's Postal Law was officially implemented, ushering in a spring of development for private express delivery enterprises. During that period, companies such as Zhongtong, Yuantong, and Yunda keenly discovered the "treasure land" of Huaxin and came to negotiate with them one after another.
Zhongtong Express
In the eyes of private express delivery companies, Huaxin's traditional "disadvantage" is actually a rare advantage. For the express logistics industry, this is an excellent gathering place. There are four high-speed elevated road networks in Huaxin Town, which can reach the Hongqiao Comprehensive Transportation Hub in 10 minutes and cover the vast hinterland of the Yangtze River Delta within a 1-hour radius. From Shanghai, this is the border; From the perspective of the Yangtze River Delta, this is actually the "center" full of heat.
"From the perspective of the development logic of the town's economy, the core is to find a unique industrial field and achieve the 'ceiling' of this relatively vertical industrial field. Huaxin's development of the express logistics industry undoubtedly has enormous potential, which is also an important means for us to transform the characteristics of transportation accessibility into development advantages." The relevant person in charge of Huaxin Town told reporters.
From "Sweat Express" to "Digital Logistics"
The process from importing the express logistics industry to forming a billion dollar industrial cluster is not overnight. In the process of town economic development, it is often encountered that there is an "impossible triangle" between the adaptability of an industry and the region, the current development trend, and the future development trend. How to balance and consider the wisdom and level of the ruler.
Specifically for Huaxin, the challenge is obvious: in the early stages of the development of the express logistics industry, the industry's evaluation of it is usually "chaotic" and "disorderly.". When it comes to "express delivery," most people don't see it as a high-end industry. They often associate it with electric scooters running on the streets, package piles as high as small mountains, and large trucks that constantly raise dust and crush the roads.
How can industries with high regional adaptability and good current development momentum have greater development space and potential? Transformation is urgent. In recent years, Huaxin Town has been helping express delivery enterprises to "diligently improve their internal skills", focusing on the development of informatization, automation, and standardization, and changing the state of "the express delivery industry is large but not strong".
On May 12, 2017, the National Engineering Laboratory of Logistics Information Interchange and Sharing Technology and Application was unveiled at the headquarters of Yuantong in Huaxin Town. On the express logistics resource sharing platform at the headquarters of YTO Express, real-time information on the arrival volume, delivery volume, and signed in volume of multiple express delivery companies, including YTO Express, is displayed to improve the operational efficiency of the logistics industry.
Yuantong Twin Towers
Zhongtong has also developed a dedicated app that supports the collection and delivery of end couriers, automated sorting equipment to improve sorting efficiency, and digital products such as drones and unmanned vehicles to solve the "last mile" delivery problem.
With the help of the integration of the Yangtze River Delta, in recent years, Qingpu has been committed to building an intangible industrial corridor - the Yangtze River Delta Digital Trunk Line. Relying on the G50 Shanghai Chongqing Expressway, it has formed close cooperation with cities along the line, opened up industrial parks and chains along the line, and collaborated to create a digital innovation development belt. The express logistics industry is also transitioning towards digitalization. Taking the construction of a commercial and service-oriented national logistics hub as an opportunity, Huaxin Town is accelerating the development of the logistics industry towards digitalization, informatization, and high-end, and promoting the extension of express logistics to digital supply chains and digital logistics equipment.
The Hongqiao Digital Logistics Equipment Port located in Huaxin Town is a typical example in this regard. Based on the advantages of the express logistics headquarters cluster, the Equipment Port focuses on developing intelligent equipment manufacturing, technological innovation, and market application scenarios for express delivery, sorting, transportation, delivery, and warehousing. In the future, the Equipment Port will also focus on the manufacturing of sorting equipment, research and development of intelligent robots, research and development of drone technology, application of hydrogen energy vehicle logistics, and cold chain transportation technology and equipment to enhance the digitalization, intelligence, and equipping level of the entire process of express logistics industry, empowering the smart logistics equipment industry.
Yunda
Top logistics companies have already laid out their operations here. For example, YTO invested in the construction of the YTO Smart Aviation Logistics Equipment Production and Research Base at the Hongqiao Digital Logistics Equipment Port, focusing on logistics information exchange and sharing, intelligent equipment informatization and automation, and logistics standard system construction. "We are no longer just 'sweat express delivery', but 'smart logistics'," said Zhang Jianfeng.
From "from quantity to quality" to "from quality to quantity"
Digitization is a means, not an end. In the view of Shen Guohui, the manager of Huaxin Town Industrial Park, logistics digitization is essentially empowering more industries with its core capabilities, promoting the coupling of digital logistics industry and advanced manufacturing industry in the town.
At present, in addition to the express logistics industry, Huaxin Town also has a manufacturing industry mainly focused on automotive core components. The automobile manufacturing industry belongs to a typical discrete manufacturing industry, with a highly dispersed supply chain. In Huaxin, the development of new business models such as "express delivery to factories" and "park logistics" can precisely empower the manufacturing industry with characteristic service industries.
In this regard, Huaxin's logistics enterprises are already laying out. Taking Zhongtong as an example, in 2021, Zhongtong collaborated with Foton Daimler to provide full process supply chain services for parts entering the factory by integrating resources such as express delivery, express delivery, and cloud warehousing. This significantly improved its resource management and collaboration capabilities, and increased the inventory turnover rate of the factory.
Shen Guohui told reporters that if the transformation of the express delivery industry itself is a change from quantity to quality, then the upgraded logistics industry coupled with multiple industries is a change from quality to quantity. "Quantitative change brings qualitative change, which is the inevitable path of industrial transformation; and this qualitative change in turn will bring quantitative change, reflected in the figures of output value and tax revenue, and reflected in the 'hero of per mu yield theory'."
At present, the Hongqiao Digital Logistics Equipment Port is developing a smart logistics characteristic industrial cluster, linking four industrial carriers: "Hongqiao Smart Park", "Hongqiao Digital Valley", "Hongqiao Medical Innovation City", and "Hongqiao Ecological Bay". In the past three years, the revenue of this industrial cluster has been increasing year by year, reaching 22.122 billion yuan, 28.579 billion yuan, and 31.641 billion yuan from 2020 to 2022, respectively.
In the process of continuous transformation and spiral rise of "quantity" and "quality", the efficient use of land is crucial, which directly determines the level and quality of industrial development. Especially, it is necessary to solve the problem of unreasonable resource allocation caused by unclear positioning and lack of precise investment promotion after promoting the reduction of construction land and releasing more land space.
After the renovation of the factory and warehouse
Since 2022, Huaxin Town has cleared over 130000 square meters of factory warehouses. After completing the rectification of sales items, Huaxin Town focuses on improving resource utilization efficiency, further improving the admission process, clarifying the responsibility of enterprises to fulfill their obligations and achieve production, and doing a good job in the "cage replacement" work.
From another perspective, industrial development often goes beyond poetry - urban vitality, public facilities, and even commercial environment are intricately related to industrial development. In these aspects, Huaxin still has shortcomings, which may be the reason why this "first express delivery town" is not well-known among non industry groups.
Regarding this, Huaxin is already laying out. Taking urban renewal as an example, since the abolition of Fengxi Town in 2001, the development of the Fengxi area in Huaxin Town has been relatively slow. This year, the "Urban Village" renovation project in Fengxi, Huaxin Town has been officially launched, with a total investment of about 33.6 billion yuan. It will create a Fengxi New City that integrates ancient and modern, water city, and industry city. A series of public supporting projects have also been promoted simultaneously. Huaxin, the "first express delivery town", will have more strength and charm in the future.
Renovation effect map of Fengxi "urban village"
