Yiguo.com and the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) during a ceremony in Shanghai on September 15, at which time the Chinese company announced it would begin working with GAA’s Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) third-party certification program.
The China-based grocery food e-commerce platform committed to including BAP in its seafood sourcing policy and preferentially sell fish and seafood that originate from BAP-certified facilities around the world. That also means BAP-certified products and their providers can expedite the process to do business with Yiguo, and Yiguo’s customers will be able to purchase BAP-certified seafood from home and abroad.
Yiguo.com and GAA will cooperate in several areas, including Yiguo preferentially purchasing BAP products, increasing the quantity of BAP products on Yiguo.com over time, and marketing BAP seafood to Yiguo’s customers. Yiguo.com and GAA will work together to educate both their seafood suppliers and consumers on responsible and sustainable aquaculture through the BAP program and the appropriate use of its blue BAP logo. GAA encourages international BAP-certified facilities/businesses to use Yiguo.com as an effective way to enter the China market.
Yiyi Yang, vice president of Yiguo.com, and Steve Hart, vice president of GAA, signed the MOU. Among those present at the ceremony were He Cui, president of CAPPMA (China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance); Dekun Li, CTO of Intertek China; and Chunyan Li, e-commerce director of Guolian Aquatic Products Co.
“We focus on maintaining high standards for the products we purchase,” said Yang. “The BAP certification program satisfies our outlook for aquaculture products, for environment and for social responsibility. This MoU signifies the beginning of a partnership. We are looking forward to achieving a win-win with GAA in the future and we will together move forward for our common goal: to provide healthy, safe, sustainable and responsible seafood to Chinese consumers.”
Yiguo’s Alibaba Connection
Established in Shanghai in 2005, Yiguo became the first e-commerce business to offer consumers a “one-stop shopping platform” to buy groceries ranging from fish and seafood to meat, vegetables, fruits and other foodstuffs. Upon receiving orders, same-day and second-day home deliveries are made to customers in more than 200 cities.
On August 3 Alibaba Group led a $300 million, D-round investment in the company, marking its fourth injection of capital into yiguo.com. The capital will be used to further develop Yiguo subsidiary ExFresh, China’s largest cold chain logistics operation.
Alibaba said it plans to leverage ExFresh to expand its delivery reach and gain better control of its distribution and logistics while allowing its Tmall Supermarket division to work more closely with Yiguo.
Alibaba Group Vice President Jet Jing said the partnership between Tmall and Yiguo has already improved Alibaba’s supply-chain services, bringing premium produce from over 147 countries to Chinese consumers.
“With the integration between Tmall and Yiguo, ExFresh will be able to provide even better cold chain services for vendors,” he said. “The tie-up would drive a better shopping experience for customers.”
ExFresh currently handles 200,000 orders a day. With the latest round of investments, Yiguo will use the funds to expand the subsidiary’s infrastructure so that it can process the 500,000 daily orders expected by the end of this year and up to five million orders in 2020.
Over one billion tons of perishable food is consumed in China per year, among which more than 50% require cold chain transportation, according to Yiguo. The company said the market still has plenty of room to grow as only about 19% of the China market has access to cold chain technologies, compared to 95% coverage of the market in North America, Europe and Japan.
