According to Luis Schmidt, Chile’s ambassador to China, “the Chilean cherry harvest season is extremely close to Chinese New Year,” and he has “the ambitious objective of replacing the gifts that Chinese people bring when they return to their areas of origin with our cherries.” Statistics show that 90% of Chile’s total cherry production is sold to China, and the volume of exports has grown more than ten times in the last ten years.
Over 4,300 tonnes of Chilean cherries arrived in supermarkets on January 4, 2023, following a voyage of more than 10,000 kilometres, when a freighter berthed at a wharf at Shanghai’s Nangang Port.
According to reports, it is the first shipment of cherries shipped by Eastern Air Logistics (EAL) under the specially designed “hired ship for Chilean cherries” plan, and it is also the first time that the Chinese fruit business has imported chilled cherries using a chartered ship. The delivery time from the production to the warehouse and port operations has been greatly shortened by the said “straight shipment from Chile to China” plan. Because there is no need to stop at a third port along the way, the cherries are kept fresh and at a steady temperature. In order to create a “seamless connection” between the point of origin and the merchants, EAL then sent complete containers directly to them. This allowed fresh cherry to provide sweetness to the Chinese New Year.
Since 2013, EAL has provided direct logistics services to import Chilean cherries based on the benefits of its complete logistics chain. Since that time, EAL has expanded quickly to take the top spot in the Chinese market for air freight logistics. A new balance between transportation costs and timeliness has also been aggressively sought in cherry logistics, giving rise to “land-sea transportation” and “shipping by rented ships.”

Source: Prnewswire