Seafood supplier strives to meet the demand

Zhejiang Ocean Family Co Ltd has vowed to "provide safe, healthy and delicious seafood" to consumers both at home and abroad, following its move to begin selling produce in 7Fresh, JD's recently launched brick-and-mortar fresh food supermarket.

The company said it now focuses its business on sectors such as ocean fisheries, aquatic products processing, seasonal seafood import and seafood sales to domestic markets.

At 7Fresh, consumers in Beijing can browse and buy Ocean Family's global, directly purchased delicacies, such as fresh salmon delivered from Norway every week and fresh fish shipped from different locations in Japan.

"We are committed to selecting the best produce areas, the best seasonal products and the best partners, and abide by compulsory standards in each process, in order to provide consumers with safe, healthy and delicious seafood," said Zeng Bo, general manager of Zhejiang Daling Seafood Co Ltd, a joint venture of Ocean Family and Japan Mitsubishi Corp.

"To achieve this goal, we have strict cold chain transportation requirements, such as those relating to temperature and time, as well as the application of new technologies for temperature monitoring during transportation and enhanced logistics speeds," Zeng said.

The company now supplies seafood for large supermarkets, high-end restaurants and large fresh food e-commerce platforms.

"The cooperation with JD is based on the high-quality requirements from both sides. The two sides have agreed on quality control, including product traceability, processing verification, logistics control and after-sales tracking services," Zeng said.

He added these requirements indicate JD has a high standard for the quality of products and sense of responsibility for every consumer, while at the same time, both sides have strong infrastructure and technical means to achieve those requirements.

JD has built up China's largest frozen and chilled e-commerce warehousing and delivery network, with 11 frozen food warehouses covering 300 cities.

The biggest difficulty for Ocean Family is the fierce market competition, Zeng said.

Various types of fresh food supermarkets have emerged over the past year, which places higher demands on seafood suppliers' service capacities and the quality of their products, according to Zeng.

"Sales have improved, but costs are also increasing in all aspects, which in turn requires a continuous improvement in the size and sales capacity of fresh food supermarkets," Zeng said.

In 2016, the sales revenue of Ocean Family reached 2.64 billion yuan ($410 million).