​Qingdao FTZ's import trade with Germany going strong

The China (Shandong) Pilot Free Trade Zone Qingdao Area, or Qingdao FTZ, is seeing steady growth in its import trade with Germany.

During the "Double 11" shopping festival on Nov 11, SGEFinder, a Qingdao FTZ-based Sino-German cross-border e-commerce platform for importing German products and selling them in China, recorded a transaction volume of more than 16 million yuan ($2.24 million) and about 120,000 payments, an increase of 20 percent year-on-year. Milk powder and beer from Germany are still selling well, up 20 percent and 40 percent year-on-year, respectively.

So far, SGEFinder's transaction volume has reached more than 3.65 billion yuan in 2022 and it is expected to exceed 4.5 billion yuan by the end of the year, said Shao Lulu, deputy general manager of Qingdao Sino-German Ecopark Industrial Development Co Ltd.

The Qingdao Sino-German Ecopark established SGEFinder as a platform committed to Sino-German international trade cooperation in 2013. The platform has reached cooperative relations with more than 100 German enterprises and introduced thousands of products. It provides international trade services such as product displays, commodity trading, information exchanges and data sharing for foreign brands and domestic channels, giving a boost to the upgrading and development of Qingdao FTZ's import trade with Germany.

SGEFinder focuses on general trade, cross-border e-commerce and bulk commodities. It has formed a full-chain import trade service system spanning market research, product introduction to marketing and promotion, and logistics and warehousing. In order to facilitate the transportation of German imported goods, SGEFinder also cooperated with DB Group to successfully open the China-Europe SGEFinder special freight train, which is 30 percent faster than shipping by cargo ships.