Compared with the large-scale citrus groves in Pujiang County, the citrus fruits grown in Baiyang Village, Anxi Town, Xinjin District of Chengdu lack economies of scale. Yet fruit trader Lai Yongquan still chose to 'set up camp' here.

On January 14, a white refrigerated truck pulled into the Baiyang Village Fruit and Vegetable Cold-Chain Sorting, Packaging, and Distribution Center. In previous years, Lai's trucks headed straight for Pujiang or Meishan—Sichuan's main citrus-producing regions—but this year, it turned onto Fangxing Road and stopped right in the village. Zhang Lin, Party Secretary of Baiyang Village, and local villagers had already sorted and packed the freshly harvested citrus. Fifteen tons of citrus bound for Malaysia were swiftly loaded onto the truck—the village's first-ever international citrus order.

"This order consists of 10 truckloads; today's shipment is the seventh." Lai Yongquan remarked. "I never expected a rural village to build an international fruit and vegetable distribution and transshipment hub."

The Baoyang Village Fruit and Vegetable Cold Chain Sorting, Packaging, and Distribution Center

Several years ago, Baiyang Village planted over 1,000 mu (approximately 165 acres) of citrus trees, initially hoping to leverage the momentum of nearby major production zones. However, as competition intensified, the question arose: how could a non-core production area break through?

In 2024, 800 mu of the village's citrus orchards obtained export cultivation registration, prompting Zhang Lin to conceive a new idea: if a distribution center with official export packaging certification could be established, the citrus could be sorted and packed locally and shipped directly to ports such as Shekou in Shenzhen and Horgos in Xinjiang for export, thereby eliminating costly transshipment.

Villagers are sorting and packaging

They acted swiftly. In 2024, the village collective, local residents, and trading enterprises jointly invested to construct a cold-chain sorting, packaging, and distribution center covering more than 6,000 square meters at the village entrance. To qualify for export registration, the facility had to meet stringent requirements, including 'adequate infrastructure, a robust management system, complete documentation, and reliable traceability.' After two on-site evaluations by Chengdu Customs and two rounds of rectifications, the center successfully met all standards.

Today, the center is fully equipped with cold-storage facilities, sorting areas, and packaging-material zones, with villagers busily at work. According to Zhang Lin, since its launch, the center has served domestic sorting and logistics for over 30,000 mu of citrus within the Tianfu Agricultural Expo Park area and provided packaging and transportation services for registered export bases, having already handled and transshipped approximately 400 metric tons of fruit.

A white refrigerated truck was parked at the entrance of the Boyang Village Fruit and Vegetable Cold Chain Sorting, Packaging, and Distribution Center

Zhang Jianwei, Director of the Anxi Town Agricultural Comprehensive Service Center, stated that leveraging the Tianfu Agricultural Expo Park as a foundation and Baiyang Village as the core, they aim to gradually expand their reach to surrounding areas, scaling up certified export citrus bases to 8,000 mu and helping more high-quality fruits access overseas markets.

The fully loaded truck slowly departed. Not far away, construction is accelerating on the Chengdu South Collection and Distribution Center of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor (Xinjin Yungang Railway Logistics Park), which will soon carry even more 'going global' aspirations.

【本文部分内容由AI辅助生成，特此声明。The author(s) generated part of the content in this work with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI), which is hereby declared.】