Standards Development

Scope

This document identifies key elements in providing overseas warehouse services in cross-border trade. It specifies the services offered by overseas warehouses, and highlights specific functions including the general principles, service provisions, service processes, service guarantee, service quality, evaluation, and improvements.

This document applies to overseas warehouse service providers and other related parties. This will guide overseas warehouse service providers on the safe and compliant overseas warehouse services.

This document does not apply to the fields that are covered by the scope of ISO/TC 315 cold chain logistics.

Purpose

What is an overseas warehouse?

Overseas warehouses are overseas operation centres established by domestic enterprises (including overseas subsidiaries) to provide storage, delivery, distribution, processing, and other value-added services for import and export commodities. The essence of overseas warehouses is to deliver the goods to the destination country in advance, which localizes cross-border trade and improves consumer shopping experience, thereby enhancing the local competitiveness of cross-border sellers in export destination markets.

With nearly 20 years of development, overseas warehouses started with only plain warehousing function from the initial stage and gradually developed into a new type of foreign trade infrastructure that integrates basic functions and value-added services such as return and exchange, circulation processing, distribution, and financing. This evolution makes overseas warehouses not just the major innovations in cross-border trade logistics models but have become the core hub of overseas logistics networks.

There has been an increase in demand for warehousing during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to mobility restrictions and safety concerns especially for commodities. COVID-19 has prompted a concentrated outbreak of overseas warehouses, with the number of warehouses continue to grow rapidly around the world. Overseas warehouses have moved from traditionally popular European and American markets to emerging countries and regions such as the Southeast Asia and South America. The layout of the warehouse network is globalized. In just over a year from 2019 to 2020, the average growth rate of the number of overseas warehouses in major countries such as the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan, and Australia is as high as 72.4%.

The role and challenges of overseas warehouses

Overseas warehouses have the advantages of fast customs clearance, speedy delivery, quick turnover, and at low cost. It can solve many traditional challenges with cross-border logistics such as timeliness, cost, customs clearance, and localization. With the global supply chain crisis, overseas warehouses have become an important mode for international logistics to manage timely delivery and keep costs down. Overseas warehouses achieve this by connecting all key parts of the supply chain, and playing a great role in dredging international logistics parties and improving supply chain problems. According to data from the eBay platform, the conversion rate of merchandise link sales in overseas warehouses is four times that of direct-issued merchandise, and the sales of goods in overseas warehouses account for more than 50%, but the number of stocks keeping units is only 10%. Therefore, more and more e-commerce platforms are tilting traffic to overseas warehouse commodities to promote transaction opportunities. Specifically, overseas warehouses can play the following roles:

——Integrate logistics resources, improve the efficiency of customs clearance of goods, while improving logistics timeliness, and reducing logistics costs;

——Help sellers optimize inventory and reduce the risk of unsalable products;

——Ensure order fulfilment, shorten the service cycle, and improve the shopping experience of end customers;

——Help the supply chain to be stable and unblocked and improve the resilience of the global supply chain;

——Promote the construction of overseas logistics networks to help enhance international competitiveness.

At present, the overseas warehouse industry is still facing many obstacles in the development of large-scale and intelligent stage:

——The lack of relevant standards has led to uneven development levels and service capabilities, and brought many risks to actual operations; 

——Facing the policy risk of the destination country during construction and operation, resulting in higher operating costs;

——Difficulty to supervise the warehouses, and the inability to control the goods and the disposal in distress as overseas warehouses and commodities are spread overseas.

——The localized operation and terminal distribution capabilities do not match the demand. Benefits of this document The lack or scarcity of standards in overseas warehouse services suggests the need for procedures and minimum standards, especially for the operators or services providers. Having established guidelines for overseas warehousing service have many benefits:

——Fills the gaps in the international standards of overseas warehouses and provides guidelines for overseas warehouse services;

——Ensures the timeliness and service quality of overseas warehouse services, reduces operating costs and improves operating quality;

——Ensures the quality of services to consumers and strengthens the trust among suppliers, consumers, e-commerce platforms and their logistics providers;

——Improves the utilization efficiency of overseas warehouses, provides more jobs, and promotes sustainable social development;

——Promotes the development of standardization, digitization, intelligence, and specialization in the overseas warehouse industry;

——Improves the level of global trade facilitation, and ensures the reliability and security of supply chains.