Auto & Transportation

Most of the global commodity trade is carried out by sea, and the price of sea transportation directly affects the trade cost of many commodities. In Cixi, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, in the past two years, because of the high freight rates, large refrigerators, washing machines and other high proportion of the freight rates, Dadian suffered from shrinking orders and even customer loss. In recent years, the freight rates of major global routes have dropped sharply, making the international trade exports of Daeju Power recover rapidly.

In Longshan Town, Cixi, Zhejiang Province, there are nearly 100 complete machine manufacturing and supporting enterprises such as refrigerators and freezers. In the warehouse of this refrigerator manufacturer, these refrigerators have been stacked for nearly two years. The person in charge of the enterprise said that the buyer of this order was from Israel, with a total of 91 units. The two parties signed a contract in December 2020, and the enterprise will complete production in March 2021. According to the contract, the freight shall be borne by the Israeli buyer, but the freight of the Middle East route has been rising, and the buyer has repeatedly asked for delayed delivery.

This washing machine manufacturing enterprise in Xinpu Town, Cixi, has exported a large number of products to North Africa. The staff told the reporter that the freight rate from Ningbo Zhoushan Port to Casablanca, North Africa, has shown a significant downward trend since March 2022, and has dropped by about 75% at present.

The sharp drop in freight not only improved the backlog of old orders, but also had a positive impact on the development of new orders. In the first two months of this year, the orders of most major local power production enterprises in Cixi increased rapidly.

After the Spring Festival, it is often the off-season for air cargo, but this year is different. In February, the domestic demand for fresh, electronic and pharmaceutical products continued to decline, and the international trade routes gradually recovered, and the international trade freight market began to be active.

Before and after the Spring Festival, the number of goods coming from the freight station has increased greatly, the variety of goods and the packaging specifications are also different, and many of them need to be handled manually. In the domestic freight station of Daxing Airport, the reporter saw that the staff in charge of the transportation were wearing exoskeleton robots, which could easily lift large freight boxes. Xiang Chunjiang, a staff member, told the reporter that they had introduced exoskeleton robots two years ago in the cargo station, but the volume of goods was small and the frequency of use was not high, and the real use was still recent.

The person in charge of the freight station told the reporter that in addition to being busy loading and unloading the goods, another important task was to prepare for the international trade cargo flight that was about to resume.

The reporter learned that more than 10 international trade routes starting from Beijing Daxing will resume in March, involving many countries and regions such as Europe, Southeast Asia and Russia, and consumer goods such as imported meat, frozen products, fruits, flowers and seedlings will further increase. This also brought Daxing Airport airport airport into an efficient operation period.