Local furniture makers build big profits, with products filling homes worldwide

Cupboards and cabinets of all shapes and sizes from Jiangxi province are furnishing homes across the world as the opening of a new inland port in East China sparks a surge in exports from the furniture capital of China.

Nankang, a small district of 800,000 people in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, is home to the largest base for producing furniture in China.

Until recently, the industry was focused almost exclusively on making furniture for the Chinese market. In 2014, only three companies in the district sold products abroad.

But that all changed in 2016 with the opening of Ganzhou Port, an inland logistics hub located just a few kilometers from Nankang.

The port has made it much easier and cheaper for companies in this landlocked part of China to export their goods, and businesses have been swift to take advantage of the new opportunities available.

More than 300 manufacturers in Nankang are now involved in foreign trade and the district's furniture is being sold in 100 different countries across the world.

The boom in exports helped the district's furniture industry grow 15.9 percent year-onyear in 2016, pushing the industry's annual revenue to 102 billion yuan ($15.3 billion), according to local government statistics.

Huiming Group, one of the district's largest furniture makers, is one of the companies that have benefited most from the new port.

The company makes sheets of chipboard from the chips and shavings salvaged from other production lines in the district, which it then uses to make flat-pack bookcases. According to Zeng Ruifu, the company's marketing director, the port has made a dramatic difference to Huiming's operations.

"In the past, the furniture needed first to be taken to a seaport by truck, and then exported to other countries by sea," said Zeng.

Now, cargo trains can transport Huiming's goods directly from Ganzhou Port to major seaports including Shenzhen in Guangdong province and Xiamen in Fujian province, reducing costs significantly.

Ganzhou Port is also able to handle all the necessary customs clearance procedures, which simplifies the export process significantly, said Zeng.

"These changes save us about 10 million yuan a year in logistics costs," Zeng said.

Huiming now sells its bookcases to about 70 countries, including the United States, France, Argentina and Chile.

For smaller companies such as JiaYouErNv, which manufactures children's furniture, the port has opened up new possibilities that simply did not exist before.

According to the company's general manager, Shen Fei, the opening of Ganzhou Port has helped JiaYouErNv grow from a small workshop that did not even have a foreign trade license in 2013 to one of Nankang's biggest exporters.

"We mainly import timber from Finland and export furniture to India and the Middle East," said Shen.

Nankang's furniture makers are likely to reap further benefits in the coming years as Ganzhou Port continues to improve its transport links.

New rail connections linking Ganzhou Port directly with Russia and Central Asian countries, including Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, opened earlier this year.

In August, the port inaugurated its most ambitious rail route yet, connecting Ganzhou with Warsaw in Poland.

Ganzhou's vice-mayor, Xu Bing, expects the port to open more rail links in the near future.

"We shall fully capitalize on the port's advantages to build Ganzhou into an international cargo distribution center for the Belt and Road Initiative," pledged Xu.