Tianjin e-hub planned for imported goods

A government-backed e-commerce association is planning to build a wholesale center for imported goods in Tianjin with potential collaboration from a subsidiary of advertising and public relations conglomerate Wire and Plastic Products Plc of London, according to officials.

The China Cross-Border E-Commerce Import Alliance has signed a strategic agreement with the government of Jinghai district in Tianjin, where the wholesale center is located, to turn the district into a cross-border e-commerce hub, Huang Tingfa, president of the alliance, told China Daily.

The association is also in talks with Salmon China Ltd, a commerce and digital subsidiary of WPP Plc that provides consultancy and technological support for e-commerce businesses, on potential collaboration.

Founded in 2015, the alliance aims to help international brands tap into the e-commerce business market in China. Its members are enterprises based in China, Europe, North America, Australia and Southeast Asia.

Huang said that the center aims to become the largest in China for imported consumer goods. The total investment is estimated at 5 billion yuan ($773 million; 679.6 million euros).

"Large numbers of products from all over the world will be shipped to the logistics park in Tianjin, where they will have preferential tax policies in the free trade zone. They will then be distributed to the rest of China. Such a business model is going to resolve the last-mile challenge for imported goods, making it faster, safer, more accurate and flexible," Huang says.

Cross-border e-commerce trading was worth 2 trillion yuan in the first half of 2015, up 42.8 percent from the same period of the previous year, according to the China E-commerce Research Center, a Shenzhen-based institute. Imports accounted for 15.2 percent of the total volume.

The Tianjin hub would include a 360,000-square-meter logistics park for storage and exhibition. Foreign exporters or their Chinese representatives would be able to supply their goods directly to the hub's sales platform, where the quality of the products would be checked.

"The authenticity and quality of the imported goods at the moment are quite fragmented. With one center to manage all the goods, the quality can therefore be guaranteed," Huang says.

Tianjin port is the fourth-largest port in the world and the only free trade zone in North China. The logistics park, located in southwestern Tianjin, is 35 kilometers from the Tianjin international airport and 120 km from Beijing.

Salmon Ltd, the London-based parent company of Salmon China, has been offering e-commerce services to the world's leading brands for 26 years.

"The sentiment among our customers across the globe is not whether they should come to China, but how," says CEO Neil Stewart, who spoke while touring the logistics park.

"Any kind of solution that makes market access easier will enable us to better help our customers tap into the Chinese market."

Salmon's role in the emerging partnership would be offering consultancy help, introducing the customer network and building a big-data base for the wholesale center, Stewart says.

"We have a lot of big-brand customers in Europe and the United States who are all considering the best way to enter the Chinese market. We have been looking for wholesale facilities that are collective and easy to use. I believe our customers would be very interested in a package facility that encompasses logistics and favorable tax policies for e-commerce," Stewart says.

yangziman@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 04/08/2016 page30)