Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao offers shoppers in US grouped delivery service, cutting shipping times to five days
- Cainiao said cross-border shipping service would mainly help Chinese consumers in US who tend to buy lots of goods on Chinese sites
- The so-called ‘consolidated shipping’ service covers both air and sea transport routes
Cainiao, Alibaba Group Holding’s logistics unit, will open a new service for consumers in the US to allow them to package several items they have bought together, cutting delivery times to as little as five days.
Cainiao said in a statement on Tuesday that the cross-border shipping service would mainly help Chinese consumers and students in the US who tend to buy lots of goods on Chinese e-commerce sites. As of 2020, there were roughly 60 million Chinese living outside the country, according to a report by Huaqiao University.
If the parcel is sent via air, delivery times may be reduced five days after the items are sent out from the warehouse. If by sea, the new service may cut the cost to as low as 12 yuan (US$1.7), depending on the size of the parcel, according to the statement.
The new overseas service comes ahead of Cainiao’s planned US$1 billion listing in Hong Kong. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
The so-called “consolidated shipping” service, covering both air and sea transport routes, will collect multiple online shopping orders placed by users on various platforms in a warehouse before shipping them from China.