CHINA. Alibaba Group logistics arm Cainiao Network has announced that it is committing RMB300 million (US$47 million) in subsidies to incentivise over 150,000 logistics employees and courier personnel across 300 Chinese cities. The move comes to safeguard logistics services ahead of the upcoming Spring Festival holiday in China.
For consumers, this means that ecommerce purchases made on Alibaba platforms such as Taobao and Tmall will be dispatched as normal, despite the anticipation of a huge increase in transactions both in China and around the world.
According to Cainiao, in 2021 Chinese consumers alone spent approximately US$127 billion on shopping and dining during the Spring Festival period, a +28.7% increase from 2020.
Other countries also saw strong growth in retail consumption during last year’s Spring Festival. Singapore recorded a +5.2% year-on-year increase in retail sales and Malaysia also saw a spike in online shopping figures in 2021.
Cainiao said these figures are expected to increase this year as a result of a growing consumer desire to send New Year gifts to loved ones physically separated due to the pandemic.
In preparation for the shopping surge, Cainiao’s warehouses have pre-stocked over 200 million festival-related goods, with export warehouses seeing an approximate five times increase in pre-stock volume compared to last year.
The pre-stocked goods include food, beauty products, furniture, household items and electronic appliances to support cross-border deliveries for over 10,000 Chinese merchants.
For overseas consumers in over 200 countries and regions, Cainiao’s export and overseas warehouses will maintain normal operations to ensure logistics timeliness of cross-border parcels.
Cainiao’s bonded warehouses situated near 20 ports in China will upkeep regular operations to further safeguard delivery timeliness of imported goods from thousands of overseas merchants to consumers in 200 Chinese cities. The delivery radius is being doubled from last year.
