On February 13, 2023, China’s No. 1 Central Document for 2023 was issued, marking the 20th such document guiding work on agriculture, rural areas and farmers since the 21st century. Consisting of nine chapters, the document mentions "cold chain" on multiple occasions, explicitly proposing to "accelerate the construction of grain drying facilities, on-farm cold storage and cold-chain logistics facilities for agricultural products", "support the construction of regional cold-chain distribution hubs at production areas", and "promote the sinking of cold-chain logistics service networks to rural areas". The cold-chain industry related to agriculture, rural areas and farmers has once again been put on the agenda.

China is a major agricultural country with a long farming civilization and a large area of arable land, accounting for 7% of the world’s total arable land. The total population of 238 countries in the world is about 7.8 billion, and China has a population of 1.4 billion, accounting for approximately 18% of the world’s total population (data as of 2022). China feeds 18% of the world’s population with only 7% of the world’s land.

Since ancient times, the Chinese people have firmly believed that "food is the first necessity of the people", and "food" has always been of paramount importance in people’s minds. Agricultural products have various characteristics such as regionality, seasonality, volatility, stability, diversity and substitutability, and most of them are not resistant to storage under natural conditions. In this context, the important role of cold storage has become increasingly prominent.

China began constructing cold storages for meat preservation in 1955, built its first fruit cold storage in 1968, and completed a controlled-atmosphere (CA) storage in 1978. In recent years, the construction of cold storages in China has developed very rapidly, mainly distributed in major production areas of fruits, vegetables, beef and mutton, as well as suburban areas of large and medium-sized cities. However, at present, traditional cold storages, namely Class C cold storages, still dominate the existing cold storage inventory in China. Such cold storages generally have problems such as low utilization rate; unlicensed design and installation, lack of unified standards and special equipment safety technical files; outdated software and hardware equipment, substandard temperature, severe pipeline corrosion, wall peeling, foundation subsidence, irregular inspection of pressure vessels, intermittent operation and operation with faults.

According to statistics from CBRE, the number of high-standard cold storages in China accounts for only 30% of the total capacity, and more than 90% of the main customers of high-standard cold storages are in the food-related fields. Data shows that the total area of national high-standard cold storages (Class A and Class B) is 8.76 million square meters, accounting for less than 1/3 of China’s total cold storage stock, of which Class A cold storages account for only 13% and Class B cold storages account for 19%. The "14th Five-Year Plan for Cold-Chain Logistics Development" points out that it is necessary to eliminate and shut down non-compliant, illegal, old and high-energy-consuming cold storages, and accelerate the renovation and upgrading of cold-chain facilities. At the same time, the plan clearly states that 100 national-level bases will be built, and backbone cold-chain logistics bases will be created as hubs. In addition, supporting industries and secondary logistics centers serve as channels, and the construction of urban cold storages as the terminal nerves, including front-end warehouses, grid warehouses, and even many on-farm cold storages at the production end, are connected in series to eventually form an integrated network. In the future, Class A and Class B cold storages will become the main types in the cold storage incremental market.