China's cold chain logistics industry maintains an overall stable and positive development trend, steadily advancing. Following the requirements of national top-level strategies and embracing market changes with new strategic priorities, cold chain logistics has gradually entered a new stage of industry transformation and upgrading. Green, intelligent, and innovative approaches will be key themes for high-quality industry development.
Domestically, the ESG concept is gaining traction, becoming a significant driving force for sustainable corporate development. It is also a strategic fulcrum for China's new development paradigm, a new channel for high-quality development in the modern logistics industry, and a crucial track for building Chinese-style modern cold chain logistics enterprises.
Development Status
The development of ESG in China's logistics industry must first implement national and industry policy requirements. National dual-carbon strategies, the 14th Five-Year Plan, the long-term planning for the logistics industry, and related opinions and regulations issued by the state all clearly mention the establishment of green supply chains, green manufacturing, green distribution, and reverse logistics systems. They require logistics companies to optimize their supply chains and logistics networks, improve energy efficiency, accelerate energy transformation, and strengthen cooperative innovation.
Secondly, meeting the needs of customers and investors. Cost-effectiveness, environmental management, greenhouse gas emissions, and information transparency in the logistics supply chain are key concerns for customers; while investors often focus more on the intrinsic value of investment targets, corporate risk assessment insights, long-term sustainable investment returns, and more accurate and transparent information disclosure.
In the new development stage, the entry barriers and management standards of the logistics industry have fundamentally improved. For logistics enterprises, the biggest pain points for both enterprises and the market are improving the modern logistics standards system. Although many foreign organizations have established ESG-related standards, the existing ESG evaluation systems still need improvement in terms of their theoretical basis, evaluation orientation, and indicator selection to better align with the Chinese context. Some aspects of the standards are still not detailed enough, and there is an urgent need to further standardize ESG evaluation standards for Chinese logistics companies and improve the quality of logistics services.
In recent years, top-level policies such as the "Action Plan for Carbon Peak Before 2030" and the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Cold Chain Logistics" have been implemented. This shows that the cold chain logistics industry has a clear direction for development, jointly promoting green, low-carbon, and sustainable development, and integrating ESG development into corporate planning, demonstrating social responsibility. Currently, Chinese cold chain logistics companies are actively exploring new technological applications, continuously promoting the deep integration of technologies such as artificial intelligence with practical cold chain logistics scenarios to achieve functions such as full-process temperature monitoring, real-time early warning, and two-way communication; they are also trying to optimize decision support and improve customer experience to achieve efficient and sustainable development of cold chain logistics.
Development Goals
The development of ESG in China's cold chain logistics is still in its early stages, and there is an urgent need to overcome difficulties, strengthen weaknesses, and improve quality.
Overcoming difficulties and strengthening the foundation for industry development. Although the market demand for cold chain products such as meat, fruits, aquatic products, dairy products, frozen foods, biological agents, and pharmaceuticals is rapidly growing, and the overall business environment for cold chain logistics continues to improve, there are still many prominent bottlenecks and pain points that hinder effective market demand fulfillment. Against this backdrop, further ESG development in cold chain logistics should prioritize strengthening the foundation. Key areas of focus include calculating the environmental impact and carbon footprint of the entire cold chain cycle, promoting the application of digital and automated technologies, coordinating and implementing standards, and cultivating specialized cold chain personnel.
Strengthening weaknesses and addressing shortcomings in information disclosure and rating certification. Because specialized regulatory agencies have not taken strong supervisory measures regarding corporate ESG management, companies have not yet made improving ESG management a key corporate strategy, and ESG disclosure levels have not reached ideal levels. Therefore, the ESG development goals for the cold chain logistics industry should focus on information disclosure and rating certification.
On the one hand, environmental management goals should be set around energy use management, greenhouse gas emission management, pollutant control, and waste management. Social performance aspects such as employee development and occupational health, data security, supplier management, and customer privacy management should also be considered to gradually improve corporate management levels and reduce corporate risks. In addition, statistics show that the disclosure rate of logistics industry-specific performance indicators is below 10%, so this is also a key area that cold chain logistics companies need to focus on when improving their ESG management systems.
On the other hand, to enhance the reliability and credibility of ESG information disclosure, it is necessary to entrust third parties with certification and rating. Since ESG rating agencies use different rating methodologies, such as topic coverage, indicators used, and calculation processes, the ESG ratings obtained by the same logistics company under different rating systems vary, making it difficult to directly compare the rating scores between agencies.
Improving quality and continuously improving people's livelihoods. Whether the ESG concept is implemented in the cold chain logistics industry should be measured by whether "logistics services have been comprehensively optimized and people's lives have been substantially improved".
For example, in the meat cold chain logistics field, ESG transformation and development require the industry to focus on model upgrades. The next step is to focus on promoting the deep integration and innovation of meat cold chain logistics with upstream and downstream industries, creating new models such as "farm + supermarket" and "breeding base + meat product deep processing + supermarket".
Another example is the pharmaceutical product cold chain logistics field. ESG transformation and development require the industry to focus on emergency response. The next step is to focus on improving the emergency response capabilities of pharmaceutical product cold chains, improving emergency linkage services and unified dispatch mechanisms, and ensuring smooth cold chain transportation and quality and safety of the logistics process for vaccines and other pharmaceutical products in emergency situations.
Development Approach
In the next stage, the entire cold chain logistics industry in China should follow national guidelines. While promoting the transformation and upgrading of supply chains in modern agriculture, the food industry, and the pharmaceutical industry, it is necessary to further lead the entire industry toward a more environmentally friendly and socially responsible direction.
In terms of environmental protection, efforts should be made to reduce the carbon footprint and energy consumption of cold chain logistics warehousing and transportation, and through technological innovation and digital transformation, optimize energy structures, strengthen the research and development and promotion of green energy-saving facilities and equipment, and technological processes, accelerating emission reduction and energy conservation, low-carbon transformation, promoting adjustments to the structure of cold chain logistics transportation, improving overall environmental management, and achieving healthy and sustainable development of the industry.
As is well known, animal husbandry is a high-carbon emissions industry, with carbon emissions accounting for as much as 15% of global total emissions. In this environment, Mengniu's ESG rating by MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International) has achieved three consecutive increases, reaching "AA" level in 2023, successfully joining the ranks of industry leaders. At the same time, Mengniu's Qujing factory successfully passed the audit by Germany's TUV Rheinland, obtaining carbon neutrality and zero-carbon factory certification. The factory had previously obtained a domestic carbon neutrality certificate and is the first zero-carbon factory in the dairy industry to achieve both international and domestic certification.
"Sustainable corporate governance, common prosperity in the dairy industry, environmentally friendly green production, a responsible industrial ecosystem, and nutritionally inclusive excellent products"—this is Mengniu's "GREEN Sustainable Development Strategy." Mengniu attaches great importance to ESG reporting. In addition to the requirements of the Stock Exchange and GRI guidelines, it systematically discloses ESG information of interest to investors and major rating agencies in the ESG report. At the same time, Mengniu promptly discloses ESG-related policy documents and special reports on its website, engaging in high-frequency communication with global investors and laying a solid foundation for improving ratings. "The underlying logic behind the current ESG promotion has shifted from investor-led to stakeholder-led. Industry chain partners and members of the industry ecosystem are all part of the corporate ESG community." This is what Mengniu firmly believes in, and it is also an inspiration for the cold chain logistics industry.
