In June, cargo traffic at Guangzhou Nansha Port was booming. Nearly 10,000 air conditioners shipped by Guangdong Midea Refrigeration Equipment Co., Ltd. completed customs clearance on the 9th and departed from Beijiao Port in Shunde, Foshan, by barge. They were then transported to Nansha Port via the "One Port" model. From there, they were transferred to international cargo ships bound for 15 countries and regions, including Thailand and Spain.

Zeng Qi, Deputy Director of the Port Supervision Department of Guangzhou Customs, explained that the customs' innovative "One Port" program uses Guangzhou Nansha Port as a hub port and inland river terminals and railway land ports as feeder ports. This allows for "single declaration, single inspection, and single release" for imported and exported goods, reducing the average storage period from seven days to less than two days.

Leng Yifeng, Customs Affairs Manager at Guangdong Midea Refrigeration Equipment Co., Ltd., explained that previously, the company's export goods were mostly transported by land to Nansha Port. This, coupled with the hours-long round trip to pick up containers, resulted in high freight costs, difficult coordination, and wasted time and effort. Nowadays, picking up a container at an inland terminal quickly brings it to the warehouse, where it's loaded and shipped to Nansha Port by connecting vessel. Simply filling out a customs declaration reduces overall logistics costs by nearly 50%.

"Open roads demonstrate vitality, which naturally leads to financial flows," said Leng Yifeng. "Customers generally have high expectations for timeliness in goods logistics. The 'One Port Access' model has significantly improved export efficiency, enabling faster turnover of goods and capital, positively impacting business."

Nansha Port boasts seamless connections to cargo ships from hundreds of overseas ports, smaller vessels from dozens of terminals within Guangdong Province, and interprovincial railways, enabling rapid aggregation and transfer of export goods. Furthermore, the Guangzhou-Europe Express, through rail-road and sea-rail combined transport, has established a logistics corridor connecting Central Asia, Guangzhou, and Southeast Asia.

"Nansha Port connects multiple transport terminals, including inland barges, trains, and international cargo ships. The 'One Port' model better leverages Nansha's locational and distribution advantages as the geographical center of the Greater Bay Area," said Sun Junjie, Head of the Transport Vehicle Supervision Section at Nansha Customs.

Now, the reach of the "One Port" initiative has expanded beyond the Greater Bay Area and surrounding cities to inland provinces, with Guangdong optimizing its inter-provincial cooperation mechanisms and its domestic opening-up strategy.

Zeng Qi explained that the "One Port" model currently operates 23 routes, covering 19 inland river terminals and four railway land ports in 12 cities across Guangdong, Hunan, and Guizhou provinces. From the launch of the "One Port" program to the end of May this year, its cumulative business volume exceeded 569,000 TEUs, benefiting over 3,000 businesses. In the first five months of this year, "One Port" business volume reached 75,000 TEUs, a year-on-year increase of 4.2%.

Similarly, at Shenzhen Yantian Port, the first scheduled train from Chengdu to Shenzhen Port arrived at the end of May, fully loaded with electrical parts and other cargo. Arriving in Shenzhen in two days and arriving in Hong Kong in three days, and then on to destinations in Europe, America, Southeast Asia, and other regions, this is another golden sea-going channel created for the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle following the inaugural "Chongqing-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Scheduled Train" in August last year.

The launch of the "Chengdu-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Scheduled Train" marks the official opening of Shenzhen Port's 20th inland port—Chengdu Inland Port. In recent years, Shenzhen Port has continuously promoted the development of sea-rail transport and the construction of inland ports, bringing the international port to the doorstep of inland customers. Currently, it operates 20 inland ports and 33 sea-rail transport routes, covering not only Guangdong Province but also Chongqing, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, and other regions, providing safe, stable, convenient, and efficient logistics services.

The continued release of more policy dividends has not only enabled seamless connectivity for export business but also optimized import business.

Not long ago, a shipment of 10 containers of rubberwood was transferred from an international liner to an inland barge, traveling from a Thai port to Nansha Port and then to Jiujiang Wharf in Foshan. After completing customs clearance in Foshan, the cargo was successfully cleared. A 6,000 yuan deduction on inland freight charges was also achieved, reducing taxes by nearly 1,000 yuan. This marked the first import transaction since Guangdong Province Customs implemented the "One Port" customs clearance model, combining the "domestic freight tax deduction" initiative with the business-friendly "One Port" initiative.

Sun Cheng, General Manager of Sinotrans Foshan Warehouse & Terminal, said: "The successful implementation of the One Port" import customs clearance model has effectively solved the problem of idle barge return capacity, lowered barge operating costs, and thus reduced logistics costs for customers. Combined with the "domestic freight tax deduction" policy, this policy can save customers 100 yuan in tax costs per container."

Guo Guangping, Deputy Director of the Foshan Customs Nanhai Office, said that these measures will help optimize customs processes, improve port efficiency, and reduce compliance costs, and will also significantly contribute to the high-quality development of the local furniture industry.

"Hub ports not only relieve the pressure of cargo congestion but also offer logistical advantages. They also eliminate the cost gap in tax bases between feeder ports and hub ports, driving the growth of feeder ports' import and export trade," said Xie Hanwei, Deputy Director of the General Business Office of the Guangdong Branch of the General Administration of Customs.

Freight logistics facilitation measures are boosting foreign trade growth. Statistics from the Guangdong Branch of the General Administration of Customs show that in the first four months of this year, the import and export volume of the nine mainland cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area reached 2.85 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.4%, 0.5 percentage points faster than the overall import and export growth of Guangdong Province during the same period.