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Delivering freshness to consumers, Part I: How food retailers can shape China's cold chain development

26 October 2026 12:36 RaboResearch
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China’s food retail market is increasingly organized around fast-changing consumer demand. To respond effectively, retailers must take the lead in building supply chains or participate closely in supply chain development and coordination. In recent years, consumers’ growing preference for fresh, healthy, and high-quality products has further increased the need for robust cold chain capabilities, prompting many retailers to expand their presence and investment across China’s cold chain.

Intro
    China’s food retail market is increasingly demand-driven, and that demand is getting harder to serve. Diverse regional preferences, fragmented channels, and fast-changing expectations require retailers to translate consumer signals into more responsive supply chains capable of handling smaller and more frequent order volumes and greater product variety. Cold chain capability is becoming critical to meeting consumer demand for freshness, perceived health benefits, convenience, and speed. Food retailers can differentiate their offerings, improve product and service quality, and enhance the overall consumer experience by developing cold chain capabilities. Through better temperature control and distribution, improved cold chain systems support the wider availability of short-shelf-life products, increase effective market supply, and reduce waste, potentially lowering average selling prices and broadening consumption occasions. Retailers will play a central role in modernizing China’s cold chain. To address current infrastructure gaps, retailers must coordinate demand data, upstream sourcing, processing, distribution, and last-mile fulfillment. But they need to determine how far upstream they should extend along the supply chain, particularly the cold chain, and ensure scale is sufficient to justify the investment. Large platforms are better positioned to build integrated asset-heavy networks, while single-brand operators may rely on long-term partnerships with specialized third-party providers. In Part I of this series, we explore why retailers must take a more active role in China’s cold chain. Part II addresses where value will accrue as the cold chain industry expands and consolidates.

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Delivering freshness to consumers, Part I_ How food retailers can shape China's cold chain development
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