Cainiao Launches Self-operated 'Cainiao Express' Services and Industry’s First 5-Day Global Delivery Service

Credit: Visual China

BEIJING, June 29 (TiPost) -- Cainiao Group unveiled on Wednesday its self-operated express service-- "Cainiao Express", which is now fully open to the market.

Cainiao's priorities this year include accelerating global express services, boosting its logistics capabilities in key overseas markets, upgrading domestic express services, and developing tiered domestic supply-chain products, according to Cainiao’s CEO Wan Lin, at the company’s annual global smart logistics summit in Hangzhou, China on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Cainiao will partner with AliExpress to launch a 'Global 5-day Delivery' international express delivery route and relevant products, aiming to deliver cross-border parcels to key overseas market within 5 working days.

The logistics arm of Alibaba Group made a commitment to never engaging in courier services to avoid competition with other major logistics companies. On June 5, 2023, Cainiao acquired a 25% stake of STO Express from Alibaba Group's holding subsidiary De'e Industrial Development for 3.878 billion yuan, making it the largest shareholder of STO Express.

Wan said that China's fast-growing and large express market requires multi-level services of the logistics industry. He added that 95% of the parcels are delivered by economy express, indicating that the vast majority of consumers have similar experience, although the demand for quality services in the e-commerce industry and logistics industry is far from being met.

According to Cainiao, its own express service is expected to deliver the best and most cost-effective service in the industry.

Cainiao Express features half-day delivery, and the cut-off time for collecting the parcels is extended to 22:00 pm. It has guaranteed compensation for non-doorstep delivery. Also, Cainiao Express covers the whole range of large, small and medium-sized parcels and tiny items.

Cainiao Express hopes to deliver "cheap and cheerful" services through its digital capabilities. The manager of Cainiao Express told Caixin that the service quality was guaranteed in the peak season by assigning more people and vehicles, which led to higher average costs. However, by using digital intelligence, they can predict the next day's order volume at night, prepare vehicles and manpower accordingly. In this way, they can improve the utilization rate of resources, and reduce the cost of redundant resources.

Currently, SF Express is still the most profitable express company, with its revenue in the first quarter of 61.048 billion yuan, down 3.07% year-on-year. The first-quarter net profit attributable to its shareholders was 1.72 billion yuan, up 68.28% year-on-year. Apart from the volume of Kerry Logistics Express and international freight forwarding and supply chain, the business volume of SF Express reached 2.888 billion in the first quarter, with a market share of 10.74%.　　JD Logistics, the logistics arm of JD Group, achieved revenue of 36.7 billion yuan in the first quarter, with 70% from external customers.

STO Express’s share price closed on Wednesday at 11.29 yuan; YTO Express 15.20 yuan, up 5.04%; ZTO Express’s Hong Kong stock price fell 2.06% to 199.6 HKD, and its U.S. shares fell 1.92% to 25.33 USD/ADS ; JD Logistics rose 1.43% to 12.78 HKD/share; SF Express fell 0.29% to 47.37 Hong Kong dollar per share.