One-week direct route, connecting cross-border supply chains! Suzhou South Ring Bridge Market is fully committed to establishing a Lao mung bean distribution hub in the Yangtze River Delta.

With the China-Laos Railway logistics corridor continuing to operate smoothly, cross-border trade in agricultural products has become increasingly active. Leveraging its strengths as a national-level backbone cold-chain logistics base, the Suzhou Nanhuanqiao market seizes the opportunity, takes proactive steps, and fully exerts itself to build Laos green soybeans as a core distribution and aggregation hub for the Yangtze River Delta. By leveraging its geographic advantages, cold-chain system, and channel network, it helps ensure stable supply of high-quality green soybeans to Yangtze River Delta markets and has formed a complete industrial chain of “Laos cultivation — port clearance — cold-chain transportation — market distribution — Yangtze River Delta distribution,” becoming a benchmark case for internationalized operations of wholesale agricultural product markets in the Yangtze River Delta.

It is understood that Laos is located in the tropics, with favorable climatic conditions. The commercial season from November each year to May of the following year conveniently fills the supply gap in traditional green soybean producing areas in China, such as Guangdong and Fujian. With its fresh, deep-green, full-bodied appearance; tightly packed beans; sweet taste; and no pesticide residues, Laos green soybeans have rapidly become a sought-after product in the restaurant, supermarket, and processing sectors in recent years. Especially during the winter and spring seasons, they fill the shortage of fresh green soybeans in China, and market demand continues to rise. Since mid-March this year, the Suzhou Nanhuanqiao market’s incoming volume of Laos green soybeans has continued to grow steadily. At present, the daily average incoming volume has already exceeded 60 tons, radiating across Shanghai and provinces including Zhejiang, Anhui, and Jiangsu. With stable quality and abundant supply, the market has been booming from pre-sale to distribution throughout the entire process. Several local wholesale agricultural produce markets around Suzhou have been purchasing in large quantities on a long-term basis, while orders from local supermarkets and restaurants have also been growing steadily. With goods sold upon arrival and supply exceeding demand, a stable Yangtze River Delta distribution network has been formed.

To build a professional distribution hub for concentrated procurement, unified distribution, and bulk transactions of Laos green soybeans in the Yangtze River Delta, and to attract high-quality merchants to gather, the Nanhuanqiao market has moved forward from multiple aspects including source of supply, cold chain, trading, and quality control to lay a solid foundation for operations. The market adheres to direct procurement from the source, encourages merchants to grow green soybeans in designated planting areas in Laos, and carries out in-depth cooperation with several large-scale planting bases, signing long-term exclusive sales agreements to ensure stable supply throughout the year, unified quality, and controllable pricing. It takes about a week for Laos green soybeans to be shipped directly to the Suzhou market. The cold-chain logistics system of “pre-cooling after harvest + temperature-controlled cold-chain trucks + market-dedicated cold storage” is used to maintain temperature control from the fields in Laos to the stalls in Suzhou, effectively reducing spoilage rates. A dedicated transaction area for Laos green soybeans has been set up, equipped with specialized loading and unloading, sorting, and packing equipment. It provides one-stop services including fast settlement and logistics dispatching, improving turnover efficiency. All green soybeans adhere to strict quality-control entry requirements; the market has set up inspection points to carry out checks on pesticide residues and quality sampling to ensure that every batch is safe and qualified.

Cao Wei, executive vice general manager of the Suzhou Nanhuanqiao market, said that the formation of Laos green soybean distribution hub in the Yangtze River Delta not only enriches residents’ “vegetable basket,” but also strongly enhances the market’s ability to ensure supply and stabilize prices of regional agricultural products, helping drive an upgrade toward internationalization, specialization, and branding. In the next step, the market will continue to deepen the construction of the Laos green soybean distribution hub, expand the scale of base cooperation, increase the frequency of incoming shipments, improve cold-chain storage, and broaden online and offline trading channels, achieving complementarity between domestic and international efforts and aligning production and sales. It will serve the “dual circulation” of domestic and international markets. At the same time, it will coordinate with key wholesale agricultural produce markets in the Yangtze River Delta to build a “1+N” distribution network, so that high-quality Laos green soybeans can reach the entire country efficiently, contributing more to ensuring stable supply of agricultural products and promoting cross-border agricultural cooperation.

Yangtze Evening News / Ziniu News reporter Gu Qiu ping, correspondent Zou Ye