Rural delivery fuels Baoshan coffee market

Decisive initiative

"There was a time when I had to carry sacks of coffee beans on my back, take a bus to Kunming, and then catch a train to Beijing or Shanghai just to find a buyer," said Fan Qizuo, a coffee grower from Zuoyuan Estate, perched 1,400 meters above sea level.

Fan has spent nearly four decades cultivating coffee. In the early 2000s, when prices plunged and transportation options were limited, many farmers gave up. Fan persisted. Now a recognized coffee expert and collaborator with the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, he has developed several new coffee strains and has won top prizes in national specialty coffee competitions.

"Now I just call the courier. They come to my farm, pick up the beans, and in two or three days, the coffee will be in a cafe in Shanghai," Fan said, as workers packed fresh-roasted beans into parcel delivery boxes. His estate now ships around 30 metric tons of coffee daily during peak season.

The turning point came in 2018, when the national "Delivery to Villages" initiative, promoted by the State Post Bureau of China, brought last-mile courier services to remote areas like Baoshan's Xinzhai village. "It was a game changer," said village Party secretary Wang Jiawei. "Coffee finally had a way out."

In Xinzhai's e-commerce and parcel delivery center, 20-year-old delivery worker Duan Zhimao scanned and shelved dozens of parcels bound for urban buyers. "During peak tourism season, we send out 300-400 packages of coffee a day," he said.

That number was unthinkable a decade ago.

Logistics as lifeline

While China's major cities enjoy lightning-fast deliveries, rural areas lagged behind. But in recent years, Yunnan's provincial and local governments have invested heavily in building rural logistics infrastructure. In Baoshan, village-level courier service coverage now exceeds 88 percent, according to Rong Rong, deputy director of the Yunnan Postal Administration.

"Express delivery is no longer just about parcels — it's a growth engine for rural industries," she said.

The numbers back that up. Last year, Baoshan shipped over 12 million coffee-related parcels, driving more than 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) in online transactions — a 32 percent increase from the previous year. The expanding delivery system helped save over 12 million yuan in logistics costs through improved integration between passenger, freight and postal networks.

To further accelerate growth, Baoshan's government is launching an initiative — constructing one logistics hub, one e-commerce park, and one centralized coffee warehousing and distribution center; ensuring each township has at least one service station, and each village has at least one delivery center.

The plan also includes exploring air, rail and direct-line delivery options to improve speed and lower costs, according to Zhao Lin, head of the Baoshan postal administration.

"Without express delivery, Baoshan coffee simply wouldn't reach the market," said Li Xiaobo, president of the Baoshan Coffee Industry Association. "Now, 95 percent of our sales are online."