Workers are busy at the Yiwu branch of ZTO Express. [Photo/zgyww.cn]

Jinhua in East China's Zhejiang province retained its position at the top of the national express delivery volume ranking in 2022, according to the list of the top 50 cities released by the State Post Bureau.

Jinhua's express delivery volume in 2022 exceeded 11.8 billion items, of which 78.8 percent, or 9.3 billion items, were made in Yiwu.

Since 2014, Yiwu has shifted from traditional freight transport to express delivery and logistics. It has introduced eight express delivery companies, including SF Express, ZTO Express, YTO Express and China Post, and built the first express delivery park in China.

Statistics showed that from 2012 to 2022, Yiwu's express delivery volume has grown rapidly from less than 100 million items to 9.3 billion items in 2022, far exceeding the national average growth rate over the same period. It has also become the most influential express delivery center in China to benefit Zhejiang and the Yangtze River Delta region.

Zheng Chengbao, the head of the Yiwu branch of ZTO Express, said that the high-speed development of Yiwu's express delivery industry is due to the strong support of the Yiwu government, which was the first in the country to allocate land to express delivery and logistics companies and promote industrial clustering.

In 2019, ZTO Express invested 1 billion yuan ($145.8 million) in Yiwu to construct its Yiwu transfer center, which covers an area of more than 20 hectares and has a construction area of 500,000 square meters. It will have a daily operating capacity of 11 million items and is one of the largest express transfer centers in the country. In addition, more than 100 million yuan was invested in independent research and development and the use of four-story fully automated sorting equipment in the park, increasing sorting speed by 52.97 percent.