Smart Harvests: How Intelligent Import and Export Strategies Are Revolutionizing Specialty Agriculture
On September 21, the reporter learned from Zhanjiang Customs that Xiahai Customs under its jurisdiction, based on the characteristics of Zhanjiang as a major agricultural city, continuously strengthened the quality and efficiency of customs’ “smart supervision” services, empowered by “intelligence”, helped to stabilize the import and export volume of characteristic agricultural products and increase their quality, and comprehensively promoted Zhanjiang’s high-quality development and high-level opening up.
Customs officers from Xiahai Customs conducted on-site inspections of the production workshops, packaging and transportation management of exported agricultural products.
Strengthening the intelligent coordination of the “chain of supervision” to promote smarter customs supervision
Recently, in the office of Guangdong Zhanjiang Suixi Xinhaimao Aquatic Seed Technology Co., Ltd., Luo Guoling, a staff member, was very happy holding the “Imported Aquatic Animal Quarantine Site Use Permit” she printed by herself: “We basically import a batch of shrimp every half a month. In the past, we often had to run back and forth between the county and the city to get the permit. Now with this system, we can directly apply for the quarantine site use permit at the company, which saves time and trouble.”
According to the deployment of smart customs construction, starting from June 25 this year, Xiahai Customs began to use the “Smart Animal and Plant Quarantine-Isolation Site Designation” system to implement online review and approval for the designation of quarantine sites for inbound animals. “This is the 43rd use permit issued after the full promotion and application of the system.” Yu Yunrui, deputy chief of the first inspection and inspection section of the customs, introduced that “through this system, enterprises can apply for the “Use Permit for Designated Quarantine Sites for Inbound and Outbound Animals” from ‘running once at most’ to ‘not running once’.” At present, Zhanjiang has 5 batches of 5,236 inbound broodstock shrimps and obtained the “Use Permit for Inbound Aquatic Animals Isolation and Quarantine Sites” through “cloud issuance”.
In addition, in order to continuously improve the supervision efficiency and service level, Xiahai Customs insists on solving problems with “intelligence”, continuously improving the “port + territorial” supervision linkage mechanism, and strengthening the three-party information sharing and coordination linkage between the port and the territorial customs and ports; deeply promoting the pilot reform of remote territorial inspection, exploring and promoting the remote implementation of the “export of bamboo, wood and grass products” business scenarios, helping enterprises to reduce costs and burdens.
Optimize the intelligent linkage of the “service chain” to promote a better business environment
“Since September last year, our company’s frozen poultry products have been continuously expanded to more than 10 emerging markets such as Africa and ASEAN. From raw material acceptance and workshop hygiene to packaging, transportation and export, each link has been guided and checked by customs comrades, ensuring that our products have always been of high quality and have smooth customs clearance.” Zhang Yang, quality control manager of Charoen Pokphand Foods (Zhanjiang) Co., Ltd., said that the company’s foreign trade business is expected to continue to grow steadily this year.
Zhanjiang is adjacent to the South China Sea and is rich in fishery resources. The scale and output value of aquaculture are both ranked first in the province. It enjoys the reputation of “China’s Golden Pomfret Capital”, “China’s Prawn Capital”, “China’s Aquatic Pre-prepared Food Capital” and so on; it is rich in red soil resources and is also a “golden land” for growing tropical crops. The planting area and output of grain crops and tropical fruits are among the highest in the province. In order to support the export of local specialty agricultural and food products, Xiahai Customs has deepened the construction of smart customs in accordance with local conditions, promoted the formation of a closed loop of the “service chain” of various policies that benefit enterprises, and promoted the high-quality development of foreign trade. Filing is an indispensable “pass” for export. The customs flexibly adopts on-site assessment of the filing of breeding farms and planting farms, and 29 new breeding farms have been registered this year. Among the registered enterprises in the jurisdiction, agricultural product export enterprises account for 69%.
In addition, the customs has also launched a series of policy “combinations”, set up a green channel for local inspection of fresh and perishable agricultural and food products, superimposed AEO credit cultivation and enjoyment, promoted the “cloud issuance” model of inspection and quarantine certificates, guided aquatic enterprises to implement factory farming and “deep-water cage” offshore farming, and continued to help tilapia, golden pomfret, oysters and other aquatic products continue to expand exports to build the “Belt and Road” countries. Since the beginning of this year, the customs has helped bananas, qilin fruit, sweet potatoes and other specialty agricultural and food products achieve “zero breakthroughs” in 11 exporting countries, and 27 types of special ornamental flowers are sold well overseas.
Deepen the intelligent operation of the “logistics chain” and promote more efficient logistics and transportation
Recently, under the supervision of customs officers from the Comprehensive Bonded Zone Supervision Section of Xiahai Customs, vehicles loaded with 50,000 tons of imported corn passed through the checkpoint of Zhanjiang Comprehensive Bonded Zone in an orderly manner.
“Before the truck arrives at the checkpoint after leaving Zhanjiang Port, the system automatically pushes the data declaration. After entering the checkpoint channel, the intelligent checkpoint system quickly and automatically collects the license plate number, weighing scale data, etc. After the system intelligently compares and identifies risks, it automatically completes inspection instructions or releases and other disposal operations, realizing automatic inspection, release and diversion of vehicles entering and leaving the area, eliminating the trouble of repeated declaration, greatly improving logistics efficiency while reducing logistics costs.” Zou Xiaoling, deputy chief of the Comprehensive Bonded Zone Supervision Section of the customs, introduced.
According to statistics, since 2023, the import of corn, soybeans and other grains in Zhanjiang Comprehensive Bonded Zone has accounted for about 50% of the total grain imports of Zhanjiang Port. In order to further improve the efficiency of grain logistics in and outside the zone, Xiahai Customs has deepened the construction of smart comprehensive bonded zone, combined with the demand for bulk cargo entering the zone to create a personalized Zhanjiang Comprehensive Bonded Zone version of “zone-port linkage”, realizing the docking of zone-port enterprise systems, automatic declaration of release orders, and automatic comparison of checkpoints, and the declaration time has been shortened from 5 minutes to “seconds”, and the card passing time has been shortened from 2 minutes to 10 seconds.
Since the Zhanjiang Comprehensive Bonded Zone was sealed and operated for more than a year, the customs has actively promoted the construction of smart customs, used technology to enable “zero problems”, insisted on unblocking the “big channel” of high-level open platform logistics, and made every effort to promote the efficient operation of the agricultural product industry chain. In response to the urgent problems reflected by enterprises such as insufficient storage capacity of agricultural products at ports, the “customs chief sends policies to the door” was carried out to promote the implementation of the supervision of storage goods by status classification, effectively activate the storage resources of enterprises; ensure the efficient exit and normal production of the second line of bonded storage raw sugar; combined with the actual situation of “high transportation costs for bulk cargo in and out of the zone”, contact multiple departments to promote the implementation of the new policy of “one ticket, multiple vehicles” to reduce costs and increase efficiency.