China: e-commerce suffers from expensive cold chain
Industry statistics show that in 2014 only 1% of these e-commerce traders are profitable out of over 4,000. The reason behind this is because the majority of these suppliers have to build their own cold chain logistics, which resulted in a drastic increase of their cost. China's comprehensive cold chain circulation rate is 19% (5% for vegetables, 15% for meat, and 13% for seafood products), while the United States and Japan can reach to 90% and 98% respectively.
What’s more, China's logistics deteriorating rate is more than 10%, while the international level is only about 5%.However, what is really confusing is that on one hand, there is huge demand for the cold chain logistics; on the other hand, the repeated construction of cold chain is quite severe. Reporters learned from the China Railway that its own company China Railway Special Cargo has a number of specialized refrigerated vehicles, but they have a serious shortage of transport capacity. At the same time, a number of fresh agricultural e-commerce suppliers continue to build their own cold chain logistics.
The main concern is that a third-party logistics service supplier cannot offer quality service in the last kilometer. Moreover, it is quite difficult to control their on-time delivery. The plight faced by the whole industry deteriorates the ecosystem of the cold chain logistics. At this stage, There is no unified industry standard for the cold chain logistics, which brings a number of problems, therefore it should be revised accordingly. Currently cold chain industry standards and national standards exist, but it lacks compulsory standards. It is known that the national compulsory standards for the cold chain logistics are in the process of being developed, and it can be released as early as the end of this year.
Source: Red Business Network