Star Shine Cargo Service Builds Upon its Operations in Shenzhen

Shenzhen China
February 12, 2009
By
Eric Xiang

Key Personnel:
Mr. Eric Yam, Business Manager
Star Shine Cargo Service (Shenzhen) Company Limited (SCS) was founded on January 1, 2004 and is a joint venture between Manfei and Maersk Group. It has grown to 450 employees and has a warehousing footprint totaling 86,000 m² located in the Yantian (Shenzhen) Port Free Trade Zone (FTZ). SCS provides value-added warehousing services and transportation management to its warehouses and the Shenzhen port terminal. SCS is ISO 9001:2000 certified and C-TPAT (customs trade partnership against terrorism) compliant.

SCS’ parent company Manfei is Hong Kong-based and has over 20 years of warehouse management experience. Years ago, most cargo exported from South China was transshipped via the Hong Kong port because the Shenzhen port was underdeveloped. Today, the Shenzhen port facilities are very modern and many shippers prefer to ship containers directly from the Shenzhen port to avoid the high costs associated with the Hong Kong port. As a result, Manfei made the decision to relocate its warehouse from Hong Kong to Shenzhen.

Figure 1 – Star Shine Warehouse

When cargo is shipped as less-than-containerload (LCL) via SCS in the FTZ, China customs considers the goods in the warehouse as exported. Therefore, shippers can efficiently receive an export declaration from China customs when product needs to be shipped.

LCL consolidation is a major service provided by SCS. Its other value-added services include: barcode scanning, labeling, pick/pack, re-packing, garment on hanger handling, quality inspections, slip sheeting, and product palletizing.

SCS has helped shippers move overseas distribution center operations into its Shenzhen warehouses to reduce transportation and intermediate handling costs. Wal-Mart is a major customer for Maersk and purchases goods from hundreds of suppliers in China. In the past, each individual supplier was shipping cargo to a central distribution center in U.S. For example, if Wal-Mart had 10 suppliers in Shenzhen and 10 stores in Chicago, each supplier would ship one 10-ton ocean container from Shenzhen to Wal-Mart’s Chicago distribution center. There the goods from the 10 different suppliers would be cross-docked into individual orders for each store and loaded into one trailer for transportation to each of the 10 stores.

Now using SCS’ service, Wal-Mart has eliminated the Chicago distribution center and processes these shipments through the SCS warehouse in Shenzhen. Today when each supplier delivers its shipment to the SCS warehouse, the ocean container is loaded according to a load plan received from each store in Chicago. Each ocean container is then exported from Shenzhen to each Chicago store directly saving on manpower, warehousing and other related costs.

Although SCS serves shippers directly, it also provides services to 3PLs including Maersk Logistics and Panalpina.

If you are a retailer like Wal-Mart, it may be beneficial to consider a 3PL like Star Shine Cargo Service to meet your warehousing and distribution needs in Shenzhen and South China as a way to reduce overall logistics costs.