J&T Express's parcel volume exceeded 30 billion pieces last year. After bidding farewell to the price war, how do they make money?

Ask AI · How can Yunnan agricultural product logistics infrastructure improve J&T Express efficiency?

On March 30th, J&T Express (1519.HK) released its 2025 performance report. The financial report shows that its total annual revenue reached $12.16 billion, an 18.5% year-over-year increase, with an adjusted net profit of $430 million, up 112.3% year-over-year. Its total parcel volume for the year broke 30 billion for the first time, reaching 30.13 billion, a 22.2% increase.

In fact, just looking at the start of 2026, five courier companies including YTO and J&T jointly raised the shipping label fee in Guizhou, combined with previous price bottom-line regulations in multiple regions, signaling the industry’s departure from “price competition for volume.” Under the new cycle of industry “anti-involution” and pursuit of high-quality growth, where do the growth and profit margins for courier companies come from?

“Many people think that express delivery is just a business, but it is also the infrastructure of society. The essence of logistics is connection,” said a person in charge of J&T Express in an interview with Southern Metropolis Bay Finance. According to him, J&T is seeking growth opportunities in China’s vast sinking markets.

It is reported that J&T is investing heavily in transit centers and extending its last-mile reach into the fields and villages of Yunnan. A transformation of agricultural product logistics infrastructure is underway. This is not only an extension of logistics channels but also a core logic for J&T to optimize its business structure, break free from homogeneous price wars, and achieve growth.

Finding profits in the mountains of Yunnan

For J&T, the Chinese market remains its fundamental base. The financial report shows that in 2025, J&T processed 22.07 billion parcels in China, with a market share of 11.1%. However, affected by fierce price competition in the first half of the year, J&T China’s adjusted EBITDA was $363 million, down from $427 million in the same period last year.

Under the influence of the broader environment, J&T must accelerate its business restructuring. The financial report mentions that the company is continuously optimizing parcel volume structures across different e-commerce platforms, expanding reverse logistics and individual scattered orders to reduce the impact of industry competition on per-ticket revenue.

This strategy of seeking profit from high-margin businesses has become a consensus among leading courier companies. Take industry leader SF Express as an example; its 2025 financial report shows that same-city delivery and economy courier services became the main drivers of growth. Zhongtong also focused on high-margin scattered parcels in Q4 last year. After the dividend from low-quality e-commerce parcels peaked, the industry collectively shifted direction.

Among these, high-value, time-sensitive highland specialty agricultural products are seen by J&T as “premium parcels” that must be captured.

“In 2015, J&T was born in Indonesia, where typhoons, earthquakes, and tsunamis frequently occur. To deliver packages to residents on remote islands, employees had to take boats, returning only the next day,” said a person in charge of J&T. He admitted that from that moment on, “no matter the mountains and seas apart, as long as someone needs us, we must reach them.”

Data from the Market Supervision Department of Yunnan Postal Administration confirms the growth potential of this red soil plateau: in 2025, Yunnan’s express delivery volume and revenue reached 1.81B parcels and 15.53B yuan, respectively; nearly 70% of the goods leaving Yunnan are highland specialty agricultural products and their processed goods.

J&T’s Yunnan regional manager Peng Sheng told Southern Metropolis Bay Finance that in 2025, J&T’s total parcel volume in Yunnan exceeded 230 million, a 31.8% increase. Among them, parcels of local specialty products reached 120 million. These 120 million parcels include not only traditional apples and bananas but also high-value new categories like Pu’er avocados and Yuxi blueberries.

To match these high-value agricultural products, it is learned that J&T launched a dedicated label “TuYouDa,” implementing priority transfer and delivery. Improving service quality to attract higher-paying customers is J&T’s way of offsetting the decline in per-ticket revenue in financial data.

The “economic account” in infrastructure

The high premiums of agricultural specialty products are built on very low loss rates and extremely high fulfillment timeliness. To shorten the “from branch to table” distance, courier companies need to invest heavily in infrastructure.

Data shows that in 2025, J&T added 112 automated sorting lines in China and focused on reducing costs in core links like transportation and sorting. In Yunnan, this hardware upgrade is particularly evident.

Zhang Shiguo, head of J&T’s Kunming transit center, calculated: in 2025, J&T invested over 60 million yuan to upgrade the Kunming transit center. After renovation, outbound processing capacity increased from an average of 600k to over 1 million parcels per day.

“For fresh goods, we set up dedicated unloading docks and upgraded the matrix chutes from straight slides to diamond-shaped slides to reduce collision chances,” Zhang said. By establishing independent direct routes to Panjin, Lanzhou, and others, and reducing transfer links, overall timeliness improved by 0.5 days. Additionally, the transit center checks real-time orders and pickups each morning via system to precisely match vehicle resources, ensuring no backlog during peak times.

Hardware reconstruction directly benefits the economy: over the past year, the average delivery time from Yunnan to nationwide increased by 2 to 3 hours. Peng Sheng pointed out that the improved logistics efficiency has saved local farmers over 24 million yuan in logistics costs.

Meanwhile, J&T further compresses supply chain costs through the “cloud warehouse” model. Sun Benliang, head of J&T Cloud Warehouse in Yunnan, explained that by adopting an integrated “left warehouse, right distribution” warehousing and distribution model, merchants do not need to build their own warehouses, reducing logistics storage costs by about 35%.

“For small and medium brands and growers, we also offer full-service warehousing, labeling, and packing,” Sun further explained. Merchants only need to connect their stores with J&T’s WMS system to automatically push orders. This model lowers the entry barrier for small farmers, enabling next-day delivery within the province and 48-hour coverage outside the province.

Courier services into villages

If transit centers are the arteries, then the grassroots terminal outlets rooted in villages are the capillaries. The closer to the source, the better the grasp of first-hand goods.

Yuxi’s Xinping County’s “Highland Prince” orange is one of Yunnan’s representative fruit brands. General Manager Chu Yuntao said that the base’s orange production exceeds 10,000 tons annually, with over 800 tons shipped daily at peak times. For such high-end fruits, J&T provides door-to-door pickup and cold chain transportation, and has also adopted a “branded carton + J&T Express box” double-layer packaging scheme to reduce damage during transit. Currently, during peak shipping periods, “Highland Prince” ships over 10,000 orders daily via J&T.

It is reported that by December 2025, J&T added more than 400 village delivery stations in Yunnan, serving over 10,000 merchants and farmers. Nationwide, J&T’s rural delivery coverage has reached 44%, covering more than 200k administrative villages.

“In the past, things in the mountains couldn’t go out because no one would pick them up or no trucks would haul them. Now, village stations are both ‘receiving points’ and ‘shipping points,’ where industrial products go down and agricultural products go up, activating the rural economy’s dual circulation,” said a J&T executive, revealing the underlying logic of courier services into villages.

J&T’s management also pointed out in the financial report that the company will continue to optimize its operation network, dynamically adjusting the density and location of last-mile outlets based on regional operations, effectively reducing last-mile pickup and delivery costs.

From early reliance on price leverage to capture the market, to now deeply cultivating fresh cold chain, customized packaging, and cloud warehouse services, J&T’s case in Yunnan reflects a facet of its move toward refined domestic operations. Driven by both global expansion and domestic “value wars,” this path of sinking market deepening is becoming J&T’s profit moat.

Reporting: Southern Metropolis Bay Finance Reporter Yan Zhaoxin