Reporter Yang Jie and trainee reporter Wang Jinghan.
Recently, a reporter from China's leading newspaper visited the capital's vegetable basket and fruit plate - Xinfadi Market. On the eve of the Spring Festival, it is the peak of procurement, and the market is full of people and traffic, and there is an endless stream of procurement vehicles, wholesale vehicles, and logistics vehicles. According to relevant statistics, more than 5,000 vehicles enter and leave the market a day, and the amount of vegetables and fruits remains at 250,000 tons, 150,000 tons high.
Cherries imported from Chile became a hot seller. Among the New Year's fruit baskets sold by merchants in the international fruit trading area of Xinfadi Market, cherries often occupy the C position. A merchant owner who was helping the courier brother load the car told reporters: "A total of more than a dozen trucks were sent in the morning, and cherries, strawberries, and navel oranges sold well. ”
Cherries have become a hot New Year's product, reflecting the improvement of national living standards and the further smoothness of international fruits.
Imported fruits sell well.
Walking into the international fruit trading area of Beijing Xinfadi Market, there are a dazzling array of fruit gift boxes at the door of the shops along the way.
The most popular ones are imported durian, mangosteen and cherries. It is winter now, and there are relatively few domestic local fruit categories, and there are more imported fruit categories. A fruit stall owner told reporters.
The Spring Festival is approaching, and brightly colored imported cherries, durians, dragon fruits, green grapes and other fruits have become hot-selling New Year's goods, and the sales volume of imported fruits has ushered in a small peak.
The fruit is plump, the stems are green, and they are very fresh and ......Lao Li, the owner of the fruit stall who mainly sells cherries, enthusiastically introduced to reporters that there are hundreds of cherry gift boxes sold every day these days. "5 catties of 2J cherries are only 180 yuan, and 5 catties of 3J cherries are 220 yuan, and the gift box packaging is very suitable for gifts. ”
J (Jumbo)" is a common unit for grading cherries in the Southern Hemisphere, and the higher the "J" number, the larger the size of the cherries. In recent years, Chilean cherries have become more and more popular among Chinese consumers. According to the Chilean Association of Fruit Importers and Exporters, only 38 percent of Chile's cherries exported in 2010 went to China, and that number has now soared to 88 percent.
Cherries have a sweet taste and a festive appearance, and have gradually become an important choice for the "fruit basket" of New Year's goods in recent years. Lao Li has been running a fruit business in Xinfadi for more than ten years. Regarding the best-selling of cherries and other categories, Lao Li said that consumers like to try new things, even if they are high. "For example, in recent years, soft-seeded pomegranates have sold well, and if hard-seeded pomegranates sell for four yuan, soft seeds can sell for more than ten yuan. ”
In order to further smooth production and marketing, the reporter learned that many Xinfadi imported fruit merchants now have their own planting bases overseas. Since the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed in 2013, Xinfadi Market has begun to organize the development of overseas planting bases. At present, Xinfadi's fruit merchants have contracted about 32 in 9 countries, including Thailand, Vietnam, Chile, Malaysia, and Australia50,000 acres of planting base. In 2023, more than 1 million tons of imported agricultural products will be traded in Xinfadi, and more than 200 kinds of high-quality fruits from more than 40 countries and regions have been sold in the Xinfadi market.
Reduce logistics costs.
Cherries are perishable and have a short shelf life, so they have high requirements for transportation and storage conditions. With the improvement of logistics and transportation technology and the reduction of costs, cherries are becoming more and more "close to the people".
Merchants in Beijing's Xinfadi told reporters that Chilean cherries mainly arrive in Guangzhou or Shanghai by sea and then be shipped to Xinfadi.
According to the data of Beijing Xinfadi**, Chilean cherries will enter the Chinese market from the end of October 2023, and the first batch of cherries will be transported by air, with an average price of 165 yuan. With the entry of sea cherries, cherries** are declining rapidly. According to the latest data, on January 31, 2024, the average number of cherries in Xinfadi, Beijing, was 39 yuan, which was only 23 at the high point6%。
Recently, Tianjin opened the "Cheerilee Express" direct flight from Chile. As of January 26, a total of 8,300 tons of cherries arrived in Tianjin and were sold to major markets in the north.
The direct express line opened this time starts from the port of San Antonio, Chile and directly arrives at the Pacific International Container Terminal of Tianjin Port in the Tianjin Dongjiang Comprehensive Bonded Zone, which greatly shortens the transportation time.
In the early morning of January 17, 2,500 tons of cherries arrived at the Xinfadi market in Beijing. Beijing Xinfadi said that Chilean cherries are selling hot in the Xinfadi market, and they are sufficient. Cherries** were lowered and became one of the important selling points of the Xinfadi New Year Festival.
It is worth mentioning that a number of express logistics "stationed" in Xinfadi, and fruit consumption in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has basically achieved "morning and evening". "It can be delivered in about two hours within the Sixth Ring Road of Beijing. Wei Dongwen, an employee of Jingdong Logistics' Xinfadi site, told reporters, "Recently, the New Year's Festival has been relatively busy, with tens of thousands of orders shipped a day. The little brothers began to collect, pack, and load at six or seven o'clock in the morning, and they could finish at one or two o'clock in the morning the next day. ”
The reporter noticed that many fruit merchants opened live broadcast rooms to sell fruits, and opened "Xinfadi" to consumers' "doorsteps", so that consumers could quickly buy fresh and high-quality agricultural products without leaving home.
*: China ** Daily.