Guangdong goods go global as tilapia cross the ocean. Recently, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (Guangdong·Huizhou) Green Agri-Products Production and Supply Base (the “GBA Green Agri-Products Base”) completed its first tilapia export order. The premium tilapia departed from Guangdong and is now bound for Colombia, a Belt and Road partner country. This marks a milestone in the Base’s development of an overseas distribution channel for agricultural products, and a landmark achievement for Guangdong’s supply and marketing system in serving Belt and Road agricultural trade cooperation and expanding “Guangdong Goods Go Global” into emerging Latin American markets.
As a key provincial-ministerial co-development project between the Guangdong Provincial Government and the All China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, the GBA Green Agri-Products Base is giving full play to its role as a platform hub. Leveraging the distinctive advantage of on-site customs operations within the park and its one-stop customs clearance and supervision facilities, the Base has created a full-chain service channel for cross-border aquatic product exports. Backed by the supply and marketing system’s province-wide organizational network, the Base effectively connects Guangdong’s aquaculture resources and processing capacity with overseas end markets, creating a public service platform for Guangdong’s competitive aquatic products, such as tilapia, to tap into emerging international markets.
With this first export order coming to fruition, the GBA Green Agri-Products Base has simultaneously facilitated the signing and settlement of a premium tilapia processing enterprise in the park, securing a key link in the aquatic product processing industry chain ahead of schedule. This move will lay a solid hardware foundation for building a complete industrial system spanning “production at source – deep processing – cross-border export,” and create core industrial conditions for the Base to conduct self-operated export business in the future.
Guangdong is a major provincial economy in China’s aquatic product foreign trade, and tilapia is a flagship category in Guangdong’s aquatic exports. The GBA Green Agri-Products Base will seize this first export order as an opportunity to integrate full-chain elements—including cold-chain warehousing, inspection and testing, customs clearance and declaration, and trade matchmaking—to comprehensively enhance its integrated service capabilities for aquatic products going global.
According to a relevant official at the GBA Green Agri-Products Base, the Base upholds the fundamental mission of supply and marketing cooperatives in serving agriculture, using trade to drive industrial agglomeration and industrial agglomeration to boost farmers’ incomes. As its aquatic product processing and export operations take shape, the Base will continue to connect with nearby aquaculture farmers, steadily expand sales channels, and pass the benefits of foreign trade through to the front end of the industrial chain, helping Guangdong’s “Hundred Counties, Thousand Towns, Ten Thousand Villages” project deliver tangible results.
The launch of this tilapia export business marks an important step for the GBA Green Agri-Products Base in tapping into emerging Belt and Road markets and deepening South-South agricultural cooperation. Next, the Base will continue to build on the Greater Bay Area’s positioning as a “major granary, major kitchen, major market, major farm, and major platform,” striving to become a hub for specialty agricultural products from across China to enter the Greater Bay Area and reach global markets.
Reported by:LU Hongyu, LI Yanwen, YUAN Runmei
