New River Checkpoint for Thai Fruit Imports Opens in Yunnan

On Aug. 5, an inauguration ceremony was held at Guanlei Port, which lies on the Mekong River at the border between Myanmar and China’s Yunnan province. The river port has become the 11th designated checkpoint for fruit imports in Yunnan province, opening a new waterway for fruit shipments from Southeast Asia to enter China.

On the afternoon of the ceremony, the first batch of durians and other fruits imported by Xishuangbanna Jinggu Agricultural Development Company successfully cleared customs at Guanlei Port. Traveling upriver from Thailand’s Chiang Saen Port on Aug. 3, the batch reached Guanlei Port in just two days. The new route is intended to significantly reduce the overall time and logistics costs for fruit imports from Thailand and nearby Southeast Asian countries, thus allowing the imported fruits to reach the Chinese market more quickly and at lower prices.

The port includes temporary cold storage facilities where imported fruits may be stored while awaiting further inspection, customs clearance or any necessary processing. The outdoor area is equipped with refrigerated storage facilities and 25 charging spots that can accommodate 20-foot and 40-foot refrigerated containers. The site also includes a container berth with comprehensive processing and supervision facilities able to handle cargo ships with capacities up to 500 metric tons.

According to reports, several companies have recently submitted quarantine approval applications to customs authorities for nearly 20,000 metric tons of fruits such as durians, mangosteens, watermelons and bananas. The relevant departments predict that the volume of fruits imported through Guanlei Port will reach 150,000 metric tons by 2025, rising to 300,000 metric tons by 2030.

Image: Pixabay

This article was translated from Chinese. Read the original article.