Express delivery boosts sales of Yunnan specialties

A postal courier of SF Express in the blueberry field (Photo by Yunnan News)

The season for blueberry harvesting came recently. Yunnan's highland blueberries are favored by consumers because of excellent taste, early market availability, and long sales cycle. With the introduction of new domestic varieties, increasing consumer demand, and expansion of e-commerce sales channels, Yunnan's blueberry sales have seen a significant increase this year.

"The transportation volume of blueberries has been increasing year by year, especially since this year,” said Li Lei, head of Yunnan SF Express's characteristic economy department, “and the volume of blueberries sent by express delivery has exceeded 2,400 tons, an increase of about 400% year on year."

Blueberries are high-value fresh products. To ensure that blueberries picked from the plantation are delivered fast to consumers, strict controls are required at every stage from planting, picking, packaging to transportation. Among these, the courier logistics network plays a crucial role.

Blueberries picked from places like Kaiyuan city and Mengzi city of Yunnan are loaded onto refrigerated trucks and sent directly to airport of Kunming. And they are sent to various parts of China within 24 hours. This has become routine at SF Express.

Currently, over 90 cargo planes are serving SF Express, allowing parcels to quickly reach hundreds of cities by chartered flights.

At the Huangjiaying Blueberry Garden in Chengjiang city, berry grower Ms. Wang handed over the packed blueberries to Yang, a postal courier. "As long as you make a phone call, the courier will come to the fields to collect them. This ensures that they can catch the mail truck of the day,” explained Wang, “and with the quick delivery, we have seen an increase in repeat orders, greatly boosting our sales."

In addition to logistics services, postal and express delivery companies such as China Post and SF Express are also actively leveraging their resources and platform to help growers expand sales channels through livestreaming sales.

"123, send the link!" At a producing base of apple and date in Menghai county of Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture, a livestream sale is underway, with over 300 items sold within 2 hours.

Source: Yunnan Daily; trans-editing by Wang Yunya