China launches high-speed 'Lychee Express' to boost fruit transportation

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠With lychee harvest in full swing across south China's Guangdong Province, China Railway on Thursday launched the first high-speed "Lychee Express" of this year to ensure freshness and efficient transport.

On Thursday morning, the inaugural train departed from Guangzhou Baiyun Station and arrived in Wuhan City, central China's Hubei Province, four and a half hours later. The freshly delivered lychees were then distributed to wholesale markets throughout central China.

This service, running from June 5 to 22, aims to preserve freshness of Lychee, with two trains setting out from Guangzhou Baiyun Station and Guangzhou South Station respectively in the morning. Four carriages on each train are reserved for lychees, enabling a daily transport capacity exceeding eight tons.

This dedicated high-speed rail link has streamlined the delivery of Guangdong's lychees to the central China market, reducing the time from orchard to market shelves in Wuhan to less than 24 hours.

The service helps raise efficiency by three times compared to traditional road transport, while keeping fruit spoilage below 5 percent.

Shenzhen Port in south China's Guangdong Province handled 8 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of foreign trade containers from January to March this year, marking a 7.81-percent increase year on year, according to Shenzhen Customs.

Connected to more than 300 ports in over 100 countries and regions around the world, Shenzhen Port ranks first in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in container throughput.