On April 16, Zhang Ruimin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Haier Group, signed a strategic partnership agreement with Sheng Guangzu, General Manager of China Railway, at Haier Group's headquarters in Qingdao. This is considered another crucial step of China Railway in its way to promote supply-side structural reforms, accelerate the construction of modern logistics network and enhance the efficiency of transportation supply.
According to a director at China Railway, the partnership is in response to the 13th Five-year Plan's initiative to push forward supply-side reforms and a result of the guidance and encouragement from the two companies' management and a detailed negotiation process. With this partnership, the two companies will be able to generate new growth engines, build an innovative, open service platform and ultimately a new ecosystem of green logistics by employing their strengths, making their contribution to the economic and social development of China and enhanced competitiveness of Chinese enterprises.
Through this agreement, the parties will conduct long-term cooperation in the spirit of equality, mutual benefit, step-by-step, prioritization, integrity and market orientation. The cooperation involves generating new growth engines based on supply-side reforms, creating an open platform of social services to build a new logistics service model, promoting in-depth logistics cooperation to drive coordinated development, strengthening information sharing to promote the construction of "Internet +", and enhancing cultural exchanges and cooperation between the two companies to drive innovative growth. The parties will establish mechanisms like high-level coordination, counterparts communication and first-line collaboration to ensure smooth operation of the cooperative processes.
As noted by this director, as of this March China Railway and Haier Group have piloted a logistics project to transport finished appliance products from Haier's Hefei facility to Shenyang, Changchun, Harbin, Chengdu, Chongqing and Urumqi as well as from its and from Qingdao facility to Shenyang, Changchun and Harbin. In order to improve the timeliness, China Railway has arranged special trains for Haier appliances. The entire transport time, with pickup and delivery included, is 7 days to Urumqi and 5 days to other cities. Meanwhile, the damage rate of goods is greatly reduced by using containers for shipping and special equipments for loading and unloading. The rail network and the rail logistics services have contributed to higher overall transportation efficiency and lower logistics costs than by road.
China Railway will take this partnership as a model for its cooperation with medium and large appliance companies in transportation, storage and delivery. By taking a "HQ-HQ" approach and leveraging the advantages such as wide coverage, strong capacity, abundant storage resources, reasonable transport time and high cost-effectiveness of China's railway network, China Railway will strive to improve the operational efficiency, enlarge the cooperative field, enrich the service portfolio and control service costs, so as to make its own contribution to the growth of enterprises and lower logistics cost for the whole society.
In addition to the cooperation with Haier, China Railway is reported to plan to join hands with other large appliance enterprise in areas clustered with appliance industry, such as Hefei and Wuhu, and have started the negotiation with some of them, with the aim to further promote its service brand for appliance logistics by rail.
