By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The 24th China Yiwu International Commodities (Standardization) Fair (Yiwu Fair), formerly China Yiwu International Commodities Fair, will be held in Yiwu City of Eastern China’s Zhejiang Province on October 21-25, 2018, organisers have said.
Yiwu Fair is China’s biggest and most influential daily necessities expo and one of the three export expos organized by China’s Ministry of Commerce.
Starting this year, Yiwu Fair will focus on enhancing international exchange and cooperation on standardization, helping export Chinese standards and introduce international standards. In 2017, Yiwu Fair innovatively combined the theme of standardization with the fair and launched a standardization expo, gathering 47 renowned domestic and international standardization institutions including China National Institute of Standardization, Standardization Information Center of China National Standardization Administration Committee, American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM), Underwriter Laboratories (UL), Alibaba and Zhejiang University, to demonstrate the great impact of standardization in quality control, industry growth and international trade performance. The standardization expo attracted over 180,000 visitors and received 18,300 inquiries. 947 letters of intent were signed and deals worth a total of approximately RMB 20 million were reached on site.
This year, Yiwu fair will continue to present the standardization expo in a “1+1+X+N” pattern. The first “1” refers to the Made-in-Zhejiang zone containing 212 standard booths in the first half of Hall C1; the second “1” refers to the standardization zone containing 212 standard booths in the first half of Hall D1; “X” refers to the standardization demonstration zone for six industries, namely hardware, crafts, accessories, textile and garments, electronics and fashion; “N” refers to the leading standardization players zone which focuses on additional eight industries.
Another focus of this year’s Yiwu Fair will be cross-border e-commerce. With a strong logistics capability and a huge supply of commodities, Yiwu City now has a total of 255,000 e-commerce merchant accounts, among which over 110,000 are cross-border merchants, contributing 15% of the country’s turnover. Yiwu’s density of e-commerce merchants in only next to Shenzhen City in China.
Yiwu Fair will present a special zone for e-commerce and trade services, which will gather cross-border e-commerce merchants, e-commerce service providers, mobile Internet players and service traders.
