Entering November, Shenzhen ushered in the busiest season of the year. A large number of factories are working at full capacity to rush overseas orders. After the product is offline, how can it be quickly distributed to the Asia-Pacific and even around the world? Let’s walk into Shenzhen’s logistics network that connects rivers to seas and connects the world.
As the end of the year approaches, the nights in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area are getting busy. In a company's smart manufacturing workshop, the production line is brightly lit, and workers are rushing to produce foreign trade orders. At this transfer station, products that have just come off the production line are packaged, sealed, and affixed with cross-border logistics manifests, and will be loaded onto trucks and shipped to the terminal that night.
Headquarters reporter He Junru: What is being packaged is an AI smart glasses. The person in charge of the company said that this product is very popular overseas this year, and many overseas consumers give it as a gift.
Goods shipped from the factory go straight to Yantian Port in Shenzhen. At this time, the harbor area was brightly lit. Quay cranes and trucks are continuing to operate. The smart dispatch system coordinates ships, storage yards and transport vehicles, and all links on site are closely connected.
Headquarters reporter He Junru: From the real-time two-dimensional map of the Yantian Port yard, we can see that multiple cargo ships are continuing to load and unload in the port area.
The berths are full of container ships, and loading and unloading operations are proceeding in an orderly manner.
As one of the largest single container terminals in the world, Yantian Port currently has 100 routes to the world every week, 53 of which are direct to APEC member economies. In the first three quarters of this year, the container throughput of Yantian Port exceeded 12 million TEUs, a year-on-year increase of nearly 10%.
At this time, air transportation in Shenzhen Baoan was equally busy. Chilean cherries and various fruits from Southeast Asia are being quickly distributed and cleared through customs from here; many high-tech products with small size and high added value are also transported by cargo flights to laboratories, factories and customers around the world. In this international cargo terminal, arriving goods are neatly stacked in the cargo area. In order to speed up the efficiency of transshipment, manifest declaration has been completed before the goods enter the cargo station, the gate can realize automatic diversion, and the handling process is completed by robots.
Headquarters reporter He Junru: All cargo moving tasks at the site are completed by unmanned handling robots.
Pan Mingqiang, general manager of Shenzhen Airport Shenchang Air Cargo Co., Ltd.: In the past, it would take five or six hours at the fastest for a shipment to land, but now it can be picked up in two to three hours at the fastest.
As the night gets darker, another busy scene in the city's "capillaries" has just begun. In Shenzhen Futian Metro Station, the packages on the conveyor belt lined up and slid down the sorting line. After 10 minutes, they were uniformly "packed" and sent to the subway train, which headed all the way to the station more than 20 kilometers away.
After arriving at the station, the unmanned vehicle waiting outside the station will take over the process and deliver the package to surrounding distribution points. This model no longer relies on traditional trucks, with an average daily handling volume of up to 30,000 shipments, and delivery efficiency increased by 20% compared with the past. The reporter recorded the delivery process of this unmanned vehicle.
Headquarters reporter He Junru: Whenever it encounters a traffic light, it will slowly slow down and stop. It will also actively avoid pedestrians when encountering them.
As the night deepens, unmanned logistics vehicles shuttle back and forth on the city roads with their lights on, distributing goods to every corner of the city one stop after another.
Zhu Jianghong, person in charge of unmanned logistics vehicles: Currently, human-machine collaboration can increase our operating efficiency by 30% to 50%.
From the production workshop to the seaport and airport, and then to every corner of the city, the entire set of three-dimensional logistics links are running non-stop in the night. This is Shenzhen’s three-dimensional logistics channel. One end is connected to the output of factories in the Greater Bay Area, and the other end is connected to the Asia-Pacific and the world. The city is non-stop, the flow of goods is non-stop, and economic and trade exchanges across national borders are taking place here every night.
