China sends its 150,000,000,000th parcel this year

We all know that ecommerce parcel delivery in China is a big industry, powering the country’s gigantic online shopping sector, as well as the fierce competition amongst the top ecommerce platforms: Alibaba, Pinduoduo, JD, Douyin, and Kuaishou. 

The express parcel delivery industry in China, of which ecommerce contributes most of the volume, just set another record. 

This morning (18 Nov), State Post Bureau of China, the regulator of parcel delivery services, announced that yesterday (17 Nov 2024), the cumulative volume of parcels sent out in China had surpassed 150 billion (or 150,000,000,000) for the 1st time. 

You can make sense of this number in the following ways: 

1. This is almost 7 times the US parcel volume, projected to be 22.3 billion according to Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index; 
2. On average 466 million parcels were sent each day in China, 11 times that of Southeast Asia; 
3. The peak daily volume was 729 million this year (on 22 October), almost 60% higher than an average day; 
4. This means on average, each resident received 106 parcels this year in China; 
5. The express delivery industry generated an average monthly revenue exceeding CNY100 billion (US$13.8 billion);
6. The parcel volume grew more than 15 times in 10 years. Here were the few key milestones:
   1. 1. 20 October 2014: 10 billion; 
      2. 28 December 2018: 50 billion; 
      3. 8 December 2021: 100 billion; 
      4. 17 November 2023: 150 billion

Five years ago, I wrote in another post on TheLowDown by Momentum Works explaining how ecommerce players can sell an item for CNY9.9 (US$1.4) with free shipping across the country. In the article, I mentioned the city of Yiwu, a city of <2 million people which shipped 2.4 billion parcels in the 1st half of 2019. Recently, we visited Yiwu as part of Momentum Works Immersion: ecommerce and live commerce. Amongst many visits in Yiwu was STO Express Yiwu facilities, which processed 3.5-4 million parcels a normal day and 8 million at its peak.

Yiwu as a whole sent out 10 billion parcels this year by 30 October, according to official statistics. That was 33 million parcels every day, close to the volume of the whole of Southeast Asia.One thing that struck us during the STO visit was – the way you look at automation is very different when you are faced with such a scale. For example, autonomous mobile robots that you typically see in ‘fully automated’ warehouses won’t be able to cope here at all.

The scale and the ensuing cost efficiency become self perpetuating as well. We met a few ecommerce bosses who moved to Yiwu from Shenzhen simply because it was cheaper to send parcels from Yiwu. When you send millions of parcels a year, the savings can be significant. 

Interestingly, the 150,000,000,000th parcel sent out, according to official sources, was a packet of local specialty apples from Tianshui in Gansu province to Chongqing Municipality. 

The apples, coincidentally, were sold on Pinduoduo platform and delivered by J&T Express.