To get Southeast Asia’s coveted durians more quickly into the hands of Chinese consumers, a port operator in the relatively far-flung market of northeastern China is building a transit centre to handle seaborne imports of the pungent, spiky and often pricey fruit.
Liaoning Port Group, part of which operates the major sea terminal in Dalian, kicked off construction of the Dalian Northeast Asia Fruit Transit Centre in late August, a group representative said this month.
That project will complement a new shipping service that the port group calls its “durian express”, the group representative confirmed. The service, unveiled on August 26, could reduce shipments to as little as six days, down from as much as twice that long in the past, while handling about 10,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of fresh durians from Southeast Asia annually. A TEU is equivalent to the capacity of a 20-foot-long shipping container.
Northeastern China’s population of roughly 100 million wants more durians, but shipments from major sources such as Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam take a relatively long time to reach Dalian, threatening the freshness of deliveries, according to analysts. Other parts of China are geographically closer to Southeast Asia.
“Northeast China is a relatively underpenetrated market for durians compared with southern and eastern China,” said Lim Chin Khee, an adviser to the Durian Academy, a Malaysian institution that trains local growers.
“Consumers [in the northeast] are increasingly curious about durians, but logistics and freshness have always been challenging because the region is far from seaports and traditional entry points like Guangzhou or Shenzhen,” Lim said.
The port group also intends to build a wider industrial-chain ecosystem for fruit imports, according to the Liaoning Port representative, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to comment publicly. That ecosystem would cover the ripening, processing, packaging and distribution of fruits.
Northern Chinese consumers have historically depended on fruit shipments to reach them from southern China, so the new Dalian service could effectively “cut out the middleman” along a lengthy supply chain, said Charles Chang, a finance professor at Fudan University in Shanghai.
Durians, native to Southeast Asia, are prized in China, which has in turn grown into the world’s largest consumer market for the thorny delicacy. Consumers pay as much as 150 yuan (US$21) for a premium 3kg durian, and the fruit is even gifted at weddings, among other major occasions.
China’s appetite for durians, coupled with governmental efforts to deepen ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations amid US trade tensions, has led to an expansion in the number of eligible exporter countries over the past three years.
Liaoning Port Group has already built the largest cold-chain logistics park in a Chinese coastal port, the state-run China Daily reported. The park has a storage capacity of 400,000 metric tonnes.
China Daily added that Dalian’s customs office has streamlined procedures to make clearing durian shipments more efficient, allowing as few as one or two days for processing and “significantly reducing spoilage rates”. - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
