Photo: CFP

 
With the amount of parcels expected to surge during China's biggest annual online shopping festival, domestic e-commerce platforms and couriers are ramping up efforts to improve delivery efficiency and quality. Industry insiders projected that the total amount of parcels will maintain growth compared with last year's Double 11 shopping festival, despite the impact of COVID-19, with the sector expected to expand by around 5 percent for the whole year.

As of Saturday, major e-commerce platforms in China have kicked off presales for the Double 11 shopping festival. Since the presale events started on October 20, leading domestic e-commerce platform JD.com has reported a slew of remarkable figures. For example, large home appliance brands including Haier, Midea, and TCL saw presales transaction volume increase more than 70 percent year-on-year, according to data it sent to the Global Times on Friday.

On October 24 alone, presales on JD Worldwide, JD's import business platform, grew by 178 percent year-on-year, with imported cosmetics and formula milk among the most popular goods.

As Alibaba's Tmall began presales at 8 pm on October 24, over 3,000 brands posted 100 percent growth in their presales within the first hour, according to media reports.

While COVID-19 may impact logistics in some areas, the total amount of parcels will still post apparent growth during the shopping spree thanks to effective policy measures aimed at boosting domestic demand of the upcoming consumption peak season in the fourth quarter, He Hui, assistant president of China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, told the Global Times on Saturday.

Driven by a surge in online sales, e-commerce platforms and logistics companies have been making full preparations for the delivery of mounting parcels.

Chinese retailer Suning said the company optimized logistics services this year by allowing retailers to shift orders to nearby warehouses or warehouses in different regions in order to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 flare-ups in some areas. 

Cainiao, Alibaba's logistics branch, said that it has reserved additional warehousing facilities of over 4 million square meters in more than 20 cities across China, including "COVID backup warehouses," to support seven-day emergency storage allocation.

China Railway Beijing Group Co Ltd said the railway authorities have stepped up repair and maintenance of cargo expresses to strengthen monitoring for the whole process to ensure safe transport of e-commerce goods, domestic news site china.com reported.

The domestic logistics sector has been transforming from market-driven to technology-driven, said Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Research Institute. "Along with the application of technologies such as 5G, cloud computing and industrial internet, the operation of the logistics will be more intelligent and efficient, and accordingly stimulate more demand."

China's logistics sector will sustain stable growth, with the industry expected to post 5 percent growth for the whole year of 2022, He said.

In a sign of stable economic recovery, the sector handled 80 billion parcels in the first three quarters of 2022, up 4.2 percent year-on-year, latest data from the State Post Bureau showed.