On February 17, at the Promotion of Greater Openness in Nanjing Services Sector & Nanjing-Hong Kong Economic and Trade Cooperation Exchange Conference themed on “Nanjing & Hong Kong Together for Shared Future”, Yuhu Group (Hong Kong) Investment Holdings Limited (“Yuhu Group”) officially signed an agreement with Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone (“NETDZ”) on establishing the first tier-1 hub in East China within the zone, with a total investment of 5 billion yuan.
Yuhu Group is a leading integrated digital service provider in the cold chain logistics industry that links domestic and foreign trade across the entire supply chain. It plans to build 10 tier-1 hubs and 30 tier-2 hubs nationwide, with cold chain project clusters exceeding 2 million square meters and cold storage capacity surpassing 700,000 tons. Its services are expected to reach nearly 800 million people across China.
The group will build a comprehensive industrial park integrating cold chain logistics, full-chain trading, processing services, trade settlements, exhibition and sales, smart park facilities, office support and more in NETDZ. Upon completion of Phase I project's incubation stage, the annual transaction value is expected to reach 20 billion yuan. After full operation of Phase II project, the total transaction value is projected to hit 40 billion yuan at full capacity.
It's learned that since inviting Yuhu Group's Chairman and delegation to Nanjing for discussions for the first time in late September 2024, the Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Commerce has led to set up a dedicated team to precisely align with the group's needs. The team has assisted in site evaluations of multiple industrial parks, and tailored project plans around key factors such as location selection, land use, policy support, and industrial synergy. Within just four months, NETDZ and Yuhu Group finalized core terms of the investment agreement through multiple rounds of negotiations. Ultimately, the agreement was officially signed on February 17, 2025.
The entry of Yuhu Group's cold chain project into Nanjing will significantly enhance the city's competitiveness in the cold chain sector. The company will strive to set up high-standard, digitally intelligent cold chain trading centers to offer full-chain integrated services to customers. Focusing on premium meat and seafood distribution, it aims to build a cold chain food supply chain system that integrates international trade and domestic circulation, and is supported by digital services. It will establish a world-leading comprehensive modern international hub and urban safeguard base that combines frozen food storage, exhibition, trading, auction, processing, distribution, logistics, tourism, and strategic reserves. This will drive synergistic growth across trade, services, and logistics industries.
Upon completion, the Yuhu cold chain project will serve as a comprehensive cold chain food trading park targeting Nanjing and radiating across the Nanjing Metropolitan Circle and East China. The project that will make its presence in NETDZ will compete with and complement existing local markets such as Zhongcai and Tianhuan. In this way, it will fill the gap in large-scale agricultural cold chain logistics infrastructure in northern Nanjing while strengthening emergency storage, distribution, and transportation capabilities for daily necessities in the northern urban cluster.
This project marks a critical step for NETDZ to transition the Longtan Port-City Integration Demonstration Zone from the corridor economy to the port economy, and from a traffic gateway to a trade gateway. It also represents a major breakthrough in aligning NETDZ with Nanjing's initiatives to pursue robust industrial and manufacturing growth, and rapidly integrating Longtan into global logistics and trade networks.
Moving forward, the two parties will collaborate to streamline logistics, commerce, information, and capital flows, and ultimately build a stable, safe and traceable cross-border cold chain food supply chain. Leveraging port advantages, NETDZ will actively develop emerging service sectors such as cross-border e-commerce and bulk commodity trade to foster integrated growth of manufacturing and service industries.
