CHONGQING, People’s Republic of China – Chongqing in southwest of China has become one of the world’s major distribution centre and country’s largest e-commerce platform for coffee, handled almost US$724.8m worth of coffee transactions since being founded in June 2016.
Even though Chongqing does not produce coffee beans, the coffee exchange has benefitted from the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe railway that runs directly from the city to Duisburg in Germany, a journey of 11,000km.
The journey only takes 13 days, saving 30 days from the conventional water transportation—its cost is also 80 percent cheaper than that of air transportation.
“The coffee trading centre in Chongqing closely links the major coffee producing areas, including Yunnan, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, with the consumer market in Europe,” said Feng Yue, chairman of the Chongqing Coffee Exchange.
Economic and really fast
The Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe Railway Company has also signed cooperation agreements with over 50 cross border e-commercial companies.
Nicola Sangiovanni, an expert advisor at an Italian food and beverages company, pointed out the importance of this policy.
“We hope that this new policy can help Europe to increase the train way because it’s really economic and really fast. It is a very important point that I think the two different countries work with each other and using this type of policy can be a really good job for each other,” she said.
Besides coffee beans, cargoes on the return journey also include vehicles, daily necessities, food, fruits, meat and medical equipment.
