DHL eCommerce says it is collaborating with the Ministry of Commerce in Thailand to offer e-commerce expertise and logistics services free of charge for a four-month period to help Thai farmers grow their business and sell their rice via e-commerce platforms.
Partnering with the Thailand Ministry of Commerce’s Department of International Trade Promotion (DITP), DHL eCommerce works with farmer co-ops across Thailand to help set up and enable an easy and streamlined process to manage their online inventory and ship to consumers domestically. The initiative follows recent challenging market conditions which have seen an oversupply of rice and strong export competition.
Experts from DHL eCommerce advise and support farmers by integrating their sales processes with e-commerce portals on BentoWeb, a local e-commerce services provider which has been pre-integrated with the DHL eCommerce Customer Web Portal. Once on BentoWeb, farmers will be able to arrange for deliveries and shipments quickly at a click of a button, allowing rice goods to be picked and dispatched to end consumers in Thailand.
The collaboration combines the global logistics experience of DHL with the in-depth local market knowledge from DHL eCommerce Thailand, the Ministry of Commerce Thailand and BentoWeb, allowing farmers to benefit from solutions that are tailored to their specific needs.
The Ministry of Commerce will work on promoting and registering farmers on www.thaitrade.com/rice while BentoWeb will enable the online order process and inventory management for the farmers. DHL eCommerce will pick up the products from the farms and deliver them free of charge to the consumers directly.
Thailand is one of the world’s top rice exporters with an expected output of 25 million tons of rice expected in the 2016/17 production year.
Commerce minister Apiradi Tantraporn said the Ministry has been rolling out a series of programs aimed at helping the local farmers, including the one just announced with DHL eCommerce Thailand.
“We have been working together in the past three weeks to onboard these farmers onto the e-commerce platform so that domestic consumers can place orders and have DHL eCommerce deliver to their doorsteps,” she said.
Testimonial from the Ban Um-sang Rice Community farmer co-op:
“The internet has opened up more possibilities for us farmers to do business. We can communicate and connect with customers directly, previously impossible with more traditional methods. We don’t have to worry about organizing our deliveries too, as they are taken care of by experienced logistics specialists. By giving us more options, e-commerce makes us less affected by existing market forces and gives us the freedom to improve our sales in new ways.”
DHL eCommerce has been offering domestic delivery services in the Thai market since the beginning of this year, and has established end-to-end domestic and international delivery solutions for Thai e-commerce merchants.
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