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China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing: Cold chain priorities

Beijing: Driven by the increasing affluence of the middle classes, who have a growing appetite for quality frozen packaged foodstuffs, China is seeing a burgeoning demand for cold chain services. The growing awareness of food safety issues has also highlighted the importance of modernizing the country’s food supply chain. The cold chain infrastructure however remains woefully inadequate when spread across the giant nation.

In early January, ten government departments in China released a new guidance on cold chain logistics industry in order to support the development of the industry.

The guidance encourages the companies in the industry to seek joint development opportunities through merger, integration or alliance. Relevant subsidies will be offered to the development of infrastructure and purchase of cold chain trucks. The guidance also calls for the development of cold chain information platforms.

“One of the essential things is to promote the concept of cold chain, lots of companies only focus on ‘cold’, not ‘chain’,” says Qin Yuming, chief secretary of the Cold Chain Logistics Commission of the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing.

According to statistics from the commission, total capacity of cold warehouses in China reached 33.2m tons in 2014, a year-on-year growth of 36.9%, the total number of cold trucks also grew 21.4% vyear-on-year to 85,000.

“Lots of cold chain logistics companies tend to enhance operations in the warehousing and value added services which have a higher profit margin, and outsource the basic logistics services, in this situation, the management of the whole logistics chain becomes very important,” Qin says.

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