A package with a Chinese e-commerce waybill recently completed a relay across the Pacific Ocean: it departed from Shanghai Port, crossed the ocean and arrived at Qiankai Port in Peru, where it was unloaded, sorted, and transferred. 48 hours later, it boarded a flight to Brazil and landed safely at Sao Paulo Airport. The entire journey from Shanghai to Sao Paulo takes 30 days.

For Chinese sellers doing business in South America, these 30 days have not come easily. In the past, goods were either shipped entirely by sea, which took a long time; Either we can take the entire journey by air freight, the cost cannot bear it. Nowadays, a new sea air intermodal transportation channel has combined the advantages of both methods.

A new path for sea air relay

This new channel is jointly designed and polished by the COSCO Shipping Group Qiankai Working Group, a subsidiary of COSCO Shipping Group, and COSCO Shipping Logistics Supply Chain Aviation Logistics Company. It uses Qiankai Port in Peru as a transit hub to efficiently connect the direct sea route from Shanghai to Qiankai with the air transport capacity from Peru to Brazil.

The longest section of the road is handed over to sea freight, using the economies of scale of transoceanic large ships to suppress the entire transportation cost; The most difficult part of South America was handed over to air freight, and time was saved by plane. The effect is very intuitive - the entire delivery time has been reduced to 30 days, which is about 10 days faster than pure sea freight.

Complete transfer within 48 hours

Multimodal transportation is most afraid of chain breakage. After the first shipment arrived at Qiankai Port by sea from Shanghai, all port transfer operations were completed in just 48 hours, and it was immediately connected to an outbound air flight directly to Sao Paulo Airport.

During transportation at Qiankai Port in Peru, relying on the digital platform of COSCO Shipping, shippers only need one tracking number to check the entire logistics information and package location, and the handover from sea freight to air freight is no longer a black box. The smooth delivery of the first e-commerce cargo demonstrates the collaborative advantages of COSCO Shipping's integrated services of shipping, port, and logistics, and also accumulates valuable experience for the innovation of cross-border logistics products in South America.

From port to hub

Qiankai Port, located 80 kilometers north of Lima, the capital of Peru, is a key project of the the Belt and Road jointly built by China and Peru. It will officially open in November 2024 and enter commercial operation in June 2025. It has shortened the sea freight time from Shanghai to Qiankai to about 23 days, reduced logistics costs by about 20%, and shortened the transportation time for Peruvian goods exported to Asia by 17 days and for Asian goods shipped to Brazil by 22 days.

Nowadays, Qiankai Port has opened three main lines and multiple branch lines, and goods from Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and other countries are also distributed here. A port is evolving into a logistics hub in South America.

China COSCO Shipping Holdings stated that it will continue to optimize the efficiency of transit connections in various links of the channel in the future. With Qiankai Port as the hub, it will extend sea air intermodal transportation services to more regions in South America, providing safer, more efficient, and more convenient logistics service guarantees for the development of economic and trade exchanges between China and Latin America.Editor/Yang Meiling