New venture should mean fresher Thai goods in China
Thailand has joined hands with a group of Chinese businessmen to establish a new distribution centre for Thai produce in China in order to prevent transportation delays that have reduced the quality of Thai goods in the past.
Deputy permanent secretary of the Commerce Ministry Pisanu Rienmahasarn said representatives from Talad Thai, Thailand's biggest fresh fruit and vegetable wholesale market, had signed a cooperation agreement with businessmen from the Chinese city of Zhongshan early last month. The agreement will encourage development of a better transportation and logistics system for fresh foods in China.Also, a distribution centre named Jintao will be built in Zhongshan through a Thai-Chinese joint venture in September next year. It will be equipped with modern facilities such as cold storage and a logistic system to ensure goods are kept fresh and delivered promptly. The new centre will replace the one currently used at Zhongshan's Jiangnan market, which has an out-of-date transportation system that has been blamed for delaying the delivery of Thai produce. "In particular, Thai fruits such as mangosteens, durians, bananas and longans rotted or lost their quality due to transportation delays in China," said Pisanu. He added that the distribution centre would also give Thai produce-exporters greater access to the Pan Pearl River Delta, China's southern economic zone, which covers the provinces of Fujian, Hainan, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guangxi as well as the special administration regions of Hong Kong and Macau. This area has a population of 463 million people and a gross domestic product of US$630 billion (Bt22.6 trillion).
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