China’s Alibaba and JD.com invest billions in drones and robots to upgrade logistics backbone of e-commerce empires
China’s courier industry has boomed with the rise of e-commerce – investment in new logistics technology is aimed at reducing delivery times even further
In a wide-open space at the Hangzhou International Expo Centre, curious onlookers pulled out their smartphones to snap a quick photo or two of the many robots on display. In one area, a robotic arm was placing boxes on top of several tall, moving robots, which seemed to travel of their own free will to a separate sorting area before tipping their load into collection bags, marked for a myriad of different destinations in China.
In another exhibit at the annual Global Smart Logistics Summit, several automated guided vehicles (AGVs), reminiscent of Roomba’s robot vacuum cleaners, scuttled about hoisting metal racks stacked with piles of boxes. Everywhere you looked, high-tech logistics technology was on display, from autonomous drones that can carry a payload of as much as a metric ton to self-driving carts that can trundle along streets to deliver an array of packages to different customers.
These new robotic inventions are a sign of how China’s express delivery industry is striving to make deliveries even more efficient, whether it's a fulfilment centre where tens of thousands of packages are packed a day, or over the ‘last mile’ of delivery, before packages are placed into the hands of eager customers.
And while delivery times have already been slashed in recent years, Alibaba’s founder and executive chairman Jack Ma Yun is so ambitious he would like to bring global delivery times for his logistics affiliate to under 72 hours – and he’s prepared to invest upwards of a hundred billion yuan to achieve this.
China’s courier industry has boomed over the last few years in line with the rise of e-commerce, with around 130 million packages now delivered to consumers in China every day – the highest number globally, according to Alibaba’s Jack Ma.
This surge in business has helped the founders of China’s biggest express delivery firms become billionaires. In 2017 alone, seven such firms went public. Today, the combined market cap of Chinese courier firms SF Express, ZTO Express, STO Express, YTO Express, Best Inc, Yunda Express, and Deppon Logistics adds up to about US$82 billion.