China’s ‘durian express’ service to bring Asean fruit to northeast region faster, fresher

To get Southeast Asia’s coveted durians more quickly into the hands of Chinese consumers, a port operator in the relatively far-flung market of northeastern China is building a transit centre to handle seaborne imports of the pungent, spiky and often pricey fruit.

Liaoning Port Group, part of which operates the major sea terminal in Dalian, kicked off construction of the Dalian Northeast Asia Fruit Transit Centre in late August, a group representative said this month.

That project will complement a new shipping service that the port group calls its “durian express”, the group representative confirmed. The service, unveiled on August 26, could reduce shipments to as little as six days, down from as much as twice that long in the past, while handling about 10,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of fresh durians from Southeast Asia annually. A TEU is equivalent to the capacity of a 20-foot-long shipping container.

Northeastern China’s population of roughly 100 million wants more durians, but shipments from major sources such as Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam take a relatively long time to reach Dalian, threatening the freshness of deliveries, according to analysts. Other parts of China are geographically closer to Southeast Asia.

“Northeast China is a relatively underpenetrated market for durians compared with southern and eastern China,” said Lim Chin Khee, an adviser to the Durian Academy, a Malaysian institution that trains local growers.

“Consumers [in the northeast] are increasingly curious about durians, but logistics and freshness have always been challenging because the region is far from seaports and traditional entry points like Guangzhou or Shenzhen,” Lim said.