by Vivian Yang

As an answer to the booming market of pre-cooked food in China, JD Logistics (JDL) introduced its tailored solutions based on its cold-chain system, giving full play to its strengths in transportation, warehousing, packaging, technology and more.

To start with, relying on JD’s cold-chain warehouses that span 37 cities in the country totaling over 610,000 square meters so far, JDL stays close to the manufacturers to ensure products are processed and stored safely and freshly.

On food refrigeration during transportation, JDL has developed a set of packaging solutions to layer goods of different temperature requirements and place refrigerants correspondingly. With such measures, products needing environments from -22℃ to 15℃ can be carried simultaneously while logistics costs are better controlled. Meanwhile, JD’s cold chain management system real-time monitors refrigerator vans on the road, ensuring food quality during the transportation process.

In addition, JDL’s digital capabilities and supply chain expertise in predicting sales, optimizing warehouse deployment and managing orders from different sales channels provide much-needed solutions for the emerging industry to gain more efficient inventory turnover, market coverage and fulfillment capabilities.

Take one pre-cooked food brand that began partnering with JDL last year for example. The brand expanded its business from B-to-B and B-to-C and engaged in livestreaming as the market heated up. But the transition also put them under great pressure to handle instantaneous order surges during big sales. JDL managed to rapidly convert its to-B inventory to to-C order production and accomplished above 99 percent timely fulfillment in the nationwide sales during the peak time.

Moreover, relying on JDL’s cold chain network, the brand upgraded its national operation from five to seven warehouses, leading to greater market coverage, shorter delivery time, and higher order satisfaction rate from 92 to 98 percent. Additionally, JDL provided a customized consumables solution for the client, lowering its cargo loss rate from 0.5 to 0.2 percent and below.

According to iiMedia Research’s estimation, the market size of pre-cooked food in China reached RMB 345.9 billion yuan in 2021 and it will maintain 20 percent annual growth, exceeding RMB 1 trillion yuan in 2027. Supply chain and cold chain capabilities have become increasingly critical for players in this segment for market success and to achieve next-level development.

(vivian.yang@jd.com)