In mid-July, under the scorching sun, a 3,000-ton cargo ship docked at Longkou Port in Xinzhou District, Wuhan, along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The port’s grab crane lifted its first scoop of corn, which was then continuously transported via an 800-meter fully automated conveyor belt at an average rate of 400 tons per hour to the granary of the National Modern Grain Logistics (Wuhan) Base.
This base is China’s first large-scale central storage and logistics project integrating both grain and cold chain industries. With a total investment exceeding 6 billion yuan and covering approximately 2,000 acres, it has attracted nearly 100 food industry supply chain enterprises.
Wuhan Xinzhou Longkou Port, the largest deep-water port in the middle reaches of the Yangtze, leverages the golden waterway of the Yangtze River and Wuhan’s rail, road, and air transport hubs, playing a vital role in ensuring national food security. A modern “Food Valley” is rapidly emerging in Xinzhou.
On the railway front, tracks within the logistics park have been laid, awaiting the August launch of freight rail services. This 5.4-kilometer dedicated rail line will connect to the Jiangbei Railway, linking with the national Beijing-Kowloon and Beijing-Guangzhou rail arteries to form a grain logistics system that spans rivers and seas, radiating nationwide.
Meanwhile, when the Hubei Communications Investment Shuangliu Yangtze River Bridge opens in the first half of next year, travel time between Wuhan Xinzhou and Ezhou will shrink from 1.5 hours to just 5 minutes. Freight transport from the port to Ezhou Huahu Airport will be reduced to under an hour, accelerating the integration of Wuhan Metropolitan Area’s “Food Valley” with the “Optics Valley.”
“With a click of a mouse, you can buy and sell globally”—the National Grain Logistics Base’s digital command center has launched three demonstration routes: “Northern Grain to the South,” “Foreign Grain to Domestic,” and “Hubei Grain to External Markets,” enabling direct grain shipments to warehouses and processing plants in inland provinces like Chongqing, Sichuan, and Hunan.
Unlike traditional granaries, the base’s warehouses have undergone digital upgrades, including electronic fencing, allowing automated data collection for quality checks, storage, retrieval, transfers, and inventory audits. The logistics park’s cold storage also features all-electric, automated, contactless handling equipment, with temperature and humidity sensors, recorders, RFID tags, automatic identification terminals, and monitoring systems ensuring full visibility, traceability, and data tracking for all goods.
So far, the base has handled 3.5 million tons of multimodal transport, nearly 4 million tons of grain throughput, and 100,000 tons of grain storage turnover. With subsequent supporting projects underway, this “National Granary” along the Yangtze will become a core logistics hub and trade distribution center for grain in central and western China.
The grain base has amplified the “magnetic” effect of supporting industries in Xinzhou’s Longkou area. In June last year, the Changmao International Cold Chain Logistics Park, with a total investment of 2.7 billion yuan and a capacity of 500,000 tons, began trial operations. It has established long-term partnerships with global livestock companies in Brazil, Argentina, and Australia, delivering high-quality beef and lamb to consumers via river-sea intermodal transport.
Leading enterprises are rapidly gathering in Xinzhou’s “Food Valley.” As early as July 2023, Fortune Global 500 company Tongwei Group established its Central China regional headquarters and a 400,000-ton smart feed factory in Longkou. Soon after, Taiwan-based Jingheng Group set up its Wuhan Smart Health Supply Chain Industrial Park and regional headquarters in Longkou, integrating offices, R&D, sales, and finance. Sichuan Wei Frozen Foods, which moved in last February, has expanded its sales network to 126 cities across the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Chengdu-Chongqing region, offering over 4,000 products, including poultry, meat, seafood, hotpot ingredients, and condiments.
Today, this largest cold chain logistics park in Central China has attracted more than 90 clients in food trade, platforms, and urban distribution, forming an industrial ecosystem.
The base will focus on cultivating four industrial chains—frozen food processing, food manufacturing, refined rice processing, and oil processing—promoting enterprise clustering, resource efficiency, and system integration. It aims to build a full industrial ecosystem spanning “grain trade to deep processing to high-value-added products and supply chain finance,” creating a model industrial park with assets worth hundreds of billions and output value in the trillions. (Text & Photos/Cheng Shuxiong, Wang Linjun, Hu Xiaokang)
