Global agri-food corporation upgrades its traditional grain logistics system

COFCO Corporation Ltd, a leading global agri-food corporation with international operations, has upgraded its traditional grain logistics system through technological innovation, ensuring the smooth operation of the 3,500-kilometer "Northern Grain Transportation to the South" route.

Along the route, grains are first transported by railway to northern ports, then shipped by sea to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province.

Afterward, some of the grains are transported "upstream" via the Pearl River Golden Waterway to inland terminals, while some are transferred to railways through bulk-to-container conversion and sent to Southwest China's regions, or directly delivered to end-users by road.

Guangzhou, with a population of 18.8 million, consumes about 7,500 tons of finished staple grains (including rice and wheat flour) on a daily basis.

COFCO Technology &Industry has built a trinity development system of "hardware facilities plus soft environment plus new technologies", according to Chen Tao, deputy general manager of COFCO Technology &Industry.

It provides end-to-end solutions — from technological R&D to implementation and demonstration — for breaking bottlenecks, smoothing arteries, and boosting momentum in grain intermodal transportation, said Chen.

Chen's company has also developed equipment such as non-destructive multi-point grain unloading devices and self-cleaning elevators with low breakage rates, effectively addressing the issues of efficiency and grain loss in the transportation process.

Nansha Port Grain Terminal Project, planned and designed by COFCO Technology &Industry, has achieved a remarkable breakthrough, allowing the grain discharging capacity of a single shallow silo to reach an impressive 2,000 tons per hour, indicating that grain from the terminal can flow into the consumer end quickly and steadily, safeguarding the three daily meals of Guangzhou residents.

It is not merely an efficiency improvement of a single port, but a microcosm of China's entire grain chain entering a new era of "high-efficiency intermodal transportation", said Chen.

Meanwhile, the district-owned grain depot in Huangpu district is a crucial node for emergency supply guarantee in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and plays a key role in the regional supply security system.

The new building-type grain warehouse project, which adopts a new generation of pipe-chain conveyor technology, integrates grain inbound and outbound processes.

By researching and designing the special structure of key components, it solves the technical problems of traditional pipe-chain conveyors in grain transportation, such as single-function, low output, short conveying distance, and high material loss, and fills the gap in domestic large-capacity circular pipe-chain conveyors.

Hu Yamin, project manager with COFCO Technology &Industry, said the completion of the project enables efficient, accurate, and rapid allocation of grain resources, achieving the goal of stabilizing the market and serving people's livelihood.

Previously, the operation of discharging dozens of tons of grain relied on manual work combined with mobile belt conveyors.

"Now with the efficiency improvement of the new warehouse type, only one-click operation is needed, and the grain discharging efficiency has been significantly increased from 50 tons per hour to 300 tons," Hu said.