Recently, Alibaba Group, AliPay and Correios concluded an agreement on strategic partnerships, aiming at promoting China-Brazil trade. Both parties will conduct cooperation in B2B, B2C, cross-border payment, logistics platforms and so on. Correios President Wagner Pinheiro de Oliveira and Alibaba Vice President Michael Lee signed the agreement in the Brazil President’s Office, witnessed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

Cifnews learnt that Correios and Alibaba aimed to jointly lay foundations for the Cainiao online logistics platform. The cooperation is based on the ever prosperous cross-border e-commerce between China and Brazil. PayPal, an online payment platform reveals in its report that major target markets of the cross-border e-commerce of “Made In China” include USA, UK, Germany, Australia and Brazil, with Brazil presenting the most impressive growth.

It is predicted that by 2018, the total value of commodities through Chinese cross-border online shopping by Brazilian consumers will increase by 7 times, topping RMB 11.4 billion. Despite that the European and American markets are still the core markets of cross-border e-commerce, the growth will inevitably slow down. In contrast, emerging markets like Brazil is gifted with great potentials and sustainability, indicating inestimable prospects.

However, with the growing importance of the Brazilian market, logistics becomes a bottleneck restricting the development of bilateral cross-border e-commerce. Cifnews learnt that despite its rapid economic growth as a BRICS country, its backward infrastructure stands as a barrier. In many places, in particular the roads, bridges and storage conditions of remote areas except those metropolises like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are poor, causing inconvenience for local e-commerce and delivery of cross-border e-commerce parcels.

As the bellwether in the logistics industry across Brazil, Correios sweeps 75% of the international orders as well as numerous domestic orders. Even major international logistics players including DHL and UPS also outsource their orders in remote areas to Correios. The cooperation between Alibaba and Correios will be mutually-beneficial and achieve win-win effect, in which the former brings about massive international orders while the latter, by virtue of its nationwide outlets, delivers the cross-border parcels of the former to its Brazilian customers, greatly improving service quality.

In 2013, mails entering Brazil numbered 20.8 million, among which a majority were the parcels from AliExpress. It is self-explanatory that Alibaba is a weighty partner of Correios.

“It is in this light that we come to realize the necessity for cooperating with Correios”, said Wang Wei, a senior operating officer at AliExpress Brazil Station. The involvement of Alibaba enables massive orders for the express e-commerce business of Correios, advances its investment in infrastructure for e-commerce and facilitates sellers of AliExrpress in customs clearance and transshipment. “More importantly, Alibaba will set up an international logistics platform, i.e., the international version of Cainiao, in South America, to connect local customers with sellers from China and the whole world ”.

Cifnews learnt that in 2013, Alibaba, Yintai Group, Fosun Group, Forchn Holdings, SF Group, STO&YTO&ZTO&Yunda, ZJS Express, Best Express and relevant institutions jointly declared to build an “intelligent logistics backbone network of China”, i.e., a fourth-party intelligence logistics platform. The Cainiao platform will ensure 24-hour delivery for any city across China.