Twenty years of cold chain

One day in early November, Lei Xiaoxi led a team representing the Municipal Bureau to inspect the Tongxing Cold Chain Industrial Park. Hu Shutong accompanied them throughout the visit and provided a detailed explanation and report.

The inspecting leaders were satisfied with the construction progress, project quality, and safety standards, and some aspects even exceeded their expectations. In just two months, in addition to the flooring and piping, the beam and column structures have also been erected, and the framework already gives a glimpse of a grand industrial park.

The spacing between each pair of reinforced concrete columns is as long as 16 meters, a scale rarely seen in cold storage projects in Qingyan City. The columns are also 9 meters high, making it a rare large-scale single-story cold storage facility in the region. This impressive scale is truly astonishing and inevitably raises questions about the future.

This time, Lei Xiaoxi also brought another piece of good news to Hu Shutong.

After Tongxing officially starts operating, the most pressing issue will undoubtedly be "where to send the goods." It is currently difficult to put into the agenda the idea of ​​cooperating with large enterprises in the province for warehousing and distribution.

Tongxing must take the lead. In a new industrial park, the level of trust between enterprises is zero. Scale is not enough to serve as a basis for cooperation. Tongxing's operational capabilities and business efficiency are the real testament to its professionalism and the true way to bring profits to enterprises.

The next step was exactly what Hu Shutong had asked Lei Xiaoxi for help with over the phone. He had his sights set on the major farmers' markets in the city.

Farmers' markets are one of the output terminals in the entire cold chain system. They directly face consumers and deliver various ingredients to thousands of households, playing an extremely important role. When buying vegetables, everyone hopes to find a clean, tidy, and bright market where the vegetables are fresh and upright, but reality is often different.

In fact, farmers' markets have their own path of transformation.

The 1990s witnessed a period of rapid expansion for farmers' markets. While providing greater convenience to citizens, many local policies that favored "whoever invests benefits" resulted in extremely low barriers to entry for the industry. This led to a series of problems in farmers' markets in sales areas, including extensive management, rudimentary facilities, and limited functionality.

Overheated development has led to vicious competition. After investment, farmers' markets have been poorly managed and have turned into large markets where stalls are rented out. Without unified regulations, dirt and disorder have become common phenomena.

Since 2001, guided and supported by national special funds, a large number of farmers' markets have undergone infrastructure upgrades and renovations, while focusing on improving modern logistics functions such as quality and safety supervision and strengthening cold storage and preservation facilities. The "Technical Specifications for the Management of Agricultural Product Wholesale Markets" were also issued to promote renovation, standardization, and upgrading. Many farmers' markets have relocated, and the transaction scale of individual markets has significantly expanded.

Some farmers' markets have begun to focus on cold storage processing, grading and packaging, and unified distribution of agricultural products, which perfectly aligns with Tongxing's functions.

Hu Shutong's mind was far from a standalone park plan. He not only knew how to establish it, but also how to proceed. He started with storage and transshipment, centralizing the supply to farmers' markets to create an initial competitive advantage. This also aligned with the city bureau's expectations for the park. From the fields to the market, Tongxing took on the entire responsibility, making the effectiveness of this first step clearly visible.

According to Lei Xiaoxi, through the rectification of farmers' markets, the Planning Bureau, together with the Industry and Commerce Bureau and the Health Bureau, has reached a consensus on guiding the three large farmers' markets in the city and has listed Tongxing as a key vegetable cooperative enterprise.

Hu Shutong felt a huge weight lifted off his shoulders, a crucial point and the best way to turn things around at this moment. More importantly, this would bring Tongxing revenue as soon as possible. Only Hu Shutong himself knew how much pressure he had been under during this period. He had invested millions without seeing a single penny, and if there were problems with the sales, the pressure would be unbearable.

As night fell, the workers stopped working. This group of people was the same garrison team that Hu Shutong had seen in the southern suburbs years ago.

Working for Yu Dajun is a blessing for the workers. They work outdoors year-round, not afraid of hardship, just hoping for a decent living, and never wanting to be delayed in receiving payment. Yu Dajun takes care of their food, lodging, and wages, which motivates the workers to work together wholeheartedly and diligently. The old buddies still call him "Yu Tou" (meaning "Head Yu"), never referring to him as "General Manager Yu."

In the evenings, Yu Dajun would have a drink in this temporary prefabricated house, and Hu Shutong would often drink with him.

Yu Dajun, being a sentimental person, reverted to his old ways when drinking, something he hadn't done in years. Hu Shutong felt a mix of emotion and nostalgia for such moments. Often, when we string together a series of particularly symbolic experiences, one doesn't forget where they came from. It's like an invisible hand, supporting a person steadily as they face the future.

That was at the end of 00, and now it's the end of 04. Everything is different, but some things can remain consistent from beginning to end. This is true of human experience, and it is also true of the original intention and determination of cold chain logistics.

What Hu Shutong is most grateful for is that, from his old dormitory to his current temporary housing, he has remained inseparable from his old companions. Just then, a cacophony of car horns sounded at the entrance of the park, their headlights blaring high beams, illuminating the surrounding area.

Hu Shutong and Yu Dajun walked out quickly, and the guard kept asking them questions, but they always gave irrelevant answers.

A moment later, a person poked his head out and started shouting incessantly.

"Boss Hu! General Manager Hu! It's me, Lin Xiang!"

"Dajun's here too! Are you two sleepwalking?! Fire the gun!"

……

I've loved cold chain logistics for twenty years.