China's annual "Double Eleven" shopping festival has entered its final stretch. Across bonded warehouses for cross-border e-commerce in Ningbo, a wide range of imported products are being sorted, packed and inspected before clearing customs and being shipped to consumers across the country.

According to data from the comprehensive service platform, between 8 p.m. on October 20 and midnight on November 11, Ningbo Customs received 10.603 million declarations for bonded cross-border e-commerce imports, with a total value of 4.17 billion yuan. The number of declarations and the value of goods increased by 2% and 5% year on year, respectively.

"Although consumers are becoming increasingly rational in their spending, cross-border e-commerce has continued to grow steadily. This fully demonstrates Ningbo's strong appeal to cross-border e-commerce businesses and its ability to reach consumers across the country," said an official from Ningbo Customs. A total of 280 e-commerce platforms, companies and warehouses in Ningbo participated in this year's shopping festival.

Traditional e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, Douyin and JD.com continued to lead in transaction volume, while membership-based platforms such as Sam's Club and VTN also performed strongly, emerging as new growth drivers.

"We are focusing on consumer demand for health and wellness by offering nutritional packages centered on fruit and vegetable powders and milk powders. We also combined livestreaming events, promotional campaigns and spending-based lucky draws to boost product exposure and conversion," said Yao Donghai, the person in charge of VTN, an e-commerce company based in Hangzhou.

Healthy consumption and quality consumption are still the main trends during this year's shopping festival. Dietary supplements and fish oil products continued to rank among the best-selling categories. Driven by newly established businesses and promotional campaigns, sales of beauty and skincare products, infant formula and footwear increased by 33.8%, 103.3% and 52.6% year on year, respectively.

Ningbo Youzun Trading Co., Ltd., the largest importer of cross-border e-commerce cosmetics at the Ningbo Lishe Bonded Logistics Center, also saw strong growth . "During the first three quarters of this year, our imports reached 323 million yuan, nearly matching the total for the whole of last year," said Zheng Xingxing, the company's foreign trade manager. "In particular, during the third-quarter stocking period for Double Eleven, we imported goods worth 112 million yuan. The number of import batches and their total value increased by 33.7% and 28.7% year on year, respectively, mainly driven by cosmetics and personal care products from Japan and South Korea."

The top 10 countries of origin for imported goods, including the United States, Italy and Korea South, remained relatively stable. Meanwhile, demand for specialty products from certain countries grew significantly. Imports of goods originating from New Zealand, for example, increased by 21.6%.

"New Zealand's agricultural and food products are known for their natural, healthy and unprocessed qualities," said Cai Yuanjie, deputy general manager of Ningbo Ningsh ing Ubay Logistics Co., Ltd. "Products such as honey and propolis, infant formula and white wine are highly aligned with Chinese consumers' growing preference for high-quality and health-oriented products, and their market acceptance continues to rise."

To cope with the surge in business during the Double Eleven shopping festival, Ningbo Customs implemented a series of targeted measures to strengthen both regulatory capacity and services. The authority expanded server resources by 40% and conducted full-process stress tests based on a peak capacity of 1.2 million orders per day, keeping system response times within two seconds.

Reporter: Sun Jiali

Translator: Zhou Ziyu