Click to read the original article for details A new round of cold-chain competition among giants has begun. Image from VCG For many, memories of summer begin with the first bite of an ice cream. How can an ice cream go from production to the consumer with the fewest steps and the fastest speed? Behind this lies a 100-billion-yuan cold-chain market, a key battleground where retail and logistics giants are vying for position. As the 618 shopping festival heats up, JD Logistics announced a cooperation意向 with Mengniu Dairy, opening its nationwide cold-chain warehouse network and core B2B backbone to Mengniu's ice cream products, creating an integrated solution from factory to sales region to dining table. Notably, just half a month ago, Alibaba's Xunlu Cold Chain signed a strategic cooperation with Zhonghe Aoya (Tianjin) Industrial Co., Ltd. (hereinafter "Zhonghe Aoya"), announcing that its cold-chain project would officially settle in Jinghai District, Tianjin. Cold chain has long been considered a tough nut to crack in the logistics field, but with the rapid development of e-commerce and new retail formats, the entry of numerous giants has spurred the industry's growth. As summer arrives, a new round of cold-chain logistics battle has once again begun.
How Can Traditional Enterprises Upgrade Their Supply Chains?
After partnering with traditional catering brands like Wangshunge and Qianji, and launching the City Partner Program, JD Logistics has now extended an olive branch to traditional dairy enterprise Mengniu. According to the cooperation, JD Logistics will use advanced warehouse management systems and operational standards to provide integrated warehousing and distribution services, manage inventory across online channels including JD.com and vertical e-commerce platforms, reduce handling times, and minimize the risk of ice cream "de-cold" (temperature abuse). Relevant data shows that China's ice cream market has exceeded 100 billion yuan, becoming the world's largest. However, cold-chain logistics has long been one of the core pain points constraining ice cream enterprises, making a competition around cold-chain supply chains imperative. Lu Jianjun, General Manager of Administration at Mengniu Group's Ice Cream Business Unit, said in an interview with media including National Business Daily that in the past, Mengniu's logistics system was mainly trunk transportation with a distributor model, where products were shipped from factories to distributors and then to consumers. With consumption upgrades and market segmentation, e-commerce has become a new sales channel for ice cream, imposing higher demands on cold chain. Cooperation with JD Logistics eliminates the intermediate distributor link. National Business Daily learned at the scene that for products like ice cream that are prone to thawing and require high turnover efficiency, JD Logistics stores them at two temperature levels, -18°C and -35°C, depending on milk content. Additionally, relying on its self-developed intelligent temperature monitoring platform, it ensures full-process temperature visibility and quality control. Furthermore, through continuous optimization of pre-cooling, insulation, and freshness preservation technologies, and the deployment of the nation's first cold-chain "goods-to-person" picking system and first automated sorting center, cold-chain sorting efficiency has increased by 2-3 times, improving warehouse automation and accelerating order turnover. Notably, since last year, JD Logistics has intensified its layout and cooperation efforts. Official data shows that to date, JD Logistics has launched four standard B2B products, including cold-chain warehousing, cold-chain LTL (less-than-truckload), cold-chain FTL (full-truckload), and cold-chain urban distribution, fully covering all aspects of cold-chain warehousing, trunk transportation, and urban delivery; and based on the supply chain characteristics and differences of industries such as origin, industrial, catering, retail, and import, it has created five industry-specific integrated customized solutions from warehousing to distribution, from online to offline, and from hardware to software.
Cold-Chain Logistics Battle in Full Swing
In the logistics field, cold chain has always been considered a tough nut to crack, but behind the pain points lies enormous market space. Data predicts that by 2020, China's cold-chain logistics market size is expected to reach 470 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 20%. This has prompted retail and logistics giants including Alibaba, JD.com, and SF Express to increase their bets on this track. In 2018, SF Express partnered with U.S. logistics giant Havi to announce the establishment of a cold-chain logistics joint venture, "New Havi," focusing on cold-chain logistics. SF Express's latest annual report shows that in 2018, its cold-chain business achieved operating revenue of 4.24 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 84.8%, maintaining rapid growth. Suning Logistics is further expanding its cold-chain warehouse coverage. Official data shows that as of Q1 2019, Suning Logistics' cold-chain warehousing area reached 200,000 square meters. According to plan, by 2020, Suning Logistics' total warehousing area will reach 20 million square meters. Additionally, Suning Cold Chain has formed a "three-stage" cold-chain delivery model: cold-chain warehouse + store + instant delivery. Alibaba, on the other hand, has been exploring cold-chain logistics solutions through cooperation with Anxianda and Mars Group, among others. At the end of May this year, Alibaba's Xunlu Cold Chain and Zhonghe Aoya announced strategic cooperation, integrating Zhonghe Aoya's existing cold-chain logistics system into Cainiao's overall cold-chain logistics system. It is understood that Xunlu Cold Chain plans to establish 50 large and medium-sized professional fresh cold-chain warehouses in China, laying out 100 fresh cold-chain trunk lines, 1,000 branch lines, and cold-chain short-haul transport. However, despite the presence of giants, there are still many pain points in cold chain. Li Xiuqiang, Head of Industry Strategic Planning at JD Logistics, stated that China's cold-chain logistics scale grows at an average annual rate of over 20%, but there are still problems such as high industry fragmentation, low concentration, a mix of good and bad players, and obvious regional characteristics. In the transition of JD Logistics' cold-chain business from 2C to 2B, Li Xiuqiang admitted that 2C is the business foundation, and on this basis, it extends to 2B. However, the current state of the cold-chain logistics industry is still small, scattered, and chaotic, and relying solely on one company's development speed is not fast enough. Some industry insiders also point out that the degree of standardization, informatization, scale, and intensification in the cold-chain industry is not high enough, technology is immature, everyone is still in the group stage, and the phenomenon of bad money driving out good still exists. Professional third-party cold-chain logistics is still in its early stages of development. Source: China News Service Economic News