Alibaba drives Malaysian agricultural exports through eWTP initiative

• Breakthrough comes in time for this year’s 618 Mid-year Shopping Festival
• Over 200,000 brands and retailers will participate in the event

ALIBABA Group on June 4 announced that the Malaysian Musang King durian will be officially imported into China in frozen whole fruit form for the first time through its online and offline channels.

The breakthrough of Musang King durian’s import into China comes in time for this year’s 618 Mid-year Shopping Festival, which seeks to empower brands and merchants to tap into China’s less-developed regions with 1.5 million new products and multiple promotional initiatives.

This year’s festival aims to engage customers in emerging cities, counties and villages across China. Taobao and Tmall are boosting promotional resources to help brands reach this rapidly growing market. Altogether, over 200,000 brands and retailers will participate in the event.

The move was made possible following the recent announcement by China’s customs authorities to greenlight imports of Malaysian durians in frozen whole fruit form into the country.

It also marks the continuing effort by the technology firm to help promote Malaysia’s agricultural products and empower local SMEs via the first overseas Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) hub established in Malaysia in 2017.

Previously, only the pulp and paste and the processed products of the Malaysian Musang King durian could be imported into China due to quarantine restrictions.

Commenting on the landmark export drive, Malaysia’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry, Sim Tze Tzin said, “Malaysia continues to facilitate the export and promotion of unique local products to the global market. The strong partnership between Malaysia and China has resulted in today’s durian export initiative and both governments have worked closely for months to facilitate the export of the frozen Musang King durian in whole fruit form to China.”

“Alibaba has been supporting our efforts on many fronts to empower Malaysian SMEs and support global trade with services encompassing talent development, on-boarding merchants on its platforms, and helping to promote Malaysia products through demand generation campaigns among others.

“We foresee this as just the beginning of a long-term strategic cooperation considering that the Malaysian government is determined to increase local exports via e-commerce platforms and to support growth in this area,” Sim continued.

“Malaysia has sufficient durians to cater for the local market and China’s consumption. In 2018, Malaysia produced over 350 million kg of durian but only exported 5% out of that so far. Through this partnership, we are positive that the number of durians exported will grow exponentially. This has also resulted in many local orchards starting to invest to increase production of durians, a strong sign that many are recognising this as an opportunity to grow.”

Helped by Alibaba’s omnichannel distribution system, Chinese consumers will be able to purchase the fruit via Tmall and Freshippo, one of Alibaba’s New Retail platforms that enables users to buy products either using its dedicated app or at one of its 150-plus technology-enabled offline stores across China.