In the first quarter of this year, Huai’an’s foreign trade import and export delivered a hard-won report card – achieving an import and export volume of 15.05 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.6%, continuing the upward trend that has bucked the trend in recent years.
From the total import and export value of 64.55 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%, hitting a new record high, to the “good start” in 2026, Huaian’s foreign trade has continued to prosper with solid construction results, vividly explaining how an inland city can build a strong foundation with manufacturing, break through innovations, and escort with services, so that “Made in Huaian” can sail to the sea and travel around the world.
Strong manufacturing foundation, hundreds of billions of industrial clusters build a solid “ballast stone” for foreign trade
The driving force for growth against the trend comes first from a solid industrial foundation.
In Lianshui County, Huaian Jietai New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., the world’s largest and most intelligent N-type solar cell manufacturing base, is writing the miracle of “chasing light” at an alarming speed.
In the workshop, each intelligent equipment is operating in an orderly manner, and an average of 4.5 million battery cells can be produced every day.
In the first half of 2025, half of the company’s products traveled across the ocean and took root on the rooftops of India and the deserts of Turkey, becoming a dazzling business card of “intelligent manufacturing in China”.
Similar stories are equally exciting in Hongze District.
Jiangsu Xinyuan Solar Technology Co., Ltd. established a globalization strategy at the beginning of its establishment, and developed products accurately according to the differentiated needs of different markets – the “Meteor Series” adopts Topcon double-wave all-black design, which meets Europeans’ aesthetic requirements for architectural appearance. The annual export volume of this product in the European market alone exceeds
More than 500MW; in areas such as Brazil and Africa, where abundant sunlight brings higher conversion efficiency, high-power modules of 600W to 700W are mainly promoted. In view of the hot and humid climate in Southeast Asia that easily causes potential-induced attenuation of photovoltaic modules, products with better anti-attenuation performance are matched to cope with efficiency loss.
Miao Qing, general manager of the company, said that Xinyuan Solar has established sales and after-sales centers in 40 countries and regions around the world.
A set of data confirms the effectiveness of “strong manufacturing foundation”: Huai’an’s exports of mechanical and electrical products in 2025 were 32.23 billion yuan, an increase of 13%. Among them, the new generation of information technology products, the “three new products”, and automobiles and spare parts, three emerging industry products worth hundreds of billions, exported 9.08 billion yuan, 8.93 billion yuan, and 4.98 billion yuan respectively, with growth rates of 29.6%, 8.8%, and 4.7% respectively.
Exports of high-tech products were 16.43 billion yuan, an increase of 16.8%, and exports accounted for 30%, an increase of 1.6 percentage points from the previous year.
From photovoltaic modules to precision components, from high-performance cells to smart equipment, “Made in Huai’an” is winning the trust of the global market with its excellent product quality.
Linkage between main branches and branches, upgraded logistics channels to open up the “main artery” to the sea
If industry is the source of foreign trade, then logistics channels are the “main arteries” through which living water flows into the sea.
In July 2025, at the Huai’an Port Phase II Container Terminal, a whistle pierced the sky, and a cargo ship loaded with 120 TEUs of Trina Solar photovoltaic modules slowly left the berth and headed for Shanghai Yangshan Port.
60 hours later, this batch of “Made in Jiangsu” products successfully arrived at Yangshan Port and set sail on a long sea voyage.
The opening of this direct route between rivers and seas has shortened Huai’an’s foreign trade container transportation time by 48 hours compared with the traditional transit mode.
The customs affairs manager of Trina Solar (Huai’an) Technology Co., Ltd. made a calculation: “In the past, it took four or five days to wait for logistics to send a batch of photovoltaic modules from Huai’an to Yangshan Port. Now it takes more than two days to arrive, and the single box freight is cheaper than before.
Half!
“As a leading enterprise in the photovoltaic industry, Huai’an Trina Solar’s container cargo export volume exceeded 100,000 TEUs in the first half of 2025, of which approximately 20,000 TEUs were shipped from Huai’an Port via the Subei Canal to Shanghai Yangshan Port, accounting for 20% of total production capacity.
– 30%.
It is estimated that the adoption of the river-sea direct connection model can save enterprises no less than 5 million yuan in logistics costs every year.
More critical than cost reduction is the fundamental improvement of supply chain stability.
The traditional transfer model requires multiple loading, unloading and container changes at the Yangtze River Terminal, with many links and high risk of collisions, which poses many hidden dangers to export products.
Nowadays, the “one order, one box” model has been fully promoted. After loading from Huai’an Port, there is no need to change boxes in the whole process, and one document is passed to the end. The speed and stability have been greatly improved.
On the day of the maiden voyage, the logistics director of an electronic information company in Huai’an led his team to the dock, carefully checked the container protection situation, and said bluntly: “The precision components we export are most afraid of collisions. In the past, we would rather spend more on freight by road than transit by water transport. Now that there are direct routes, we plan to transfer 80% of export goods to water transport.”
The effect of the “golden channel” is accelerating.
In 2025, the foreign trade container throughput of Huai’an Port will reach 158,000 TEUs, a year-on-year increase of 37.7%.
New entities and new business formats, from “not going overseas” to “selling globally”
The industrial foundation is deep and the logistics channels are open, but if “Made in Huai’an” is to truly spread globally, more market entities that “dare to go overseas and know how to go overseas” are needed.
In the foreign trade office of Jiangsu Huaihai Profile Technology Co., Ltd., staff are skillfully responding to inquiries from overseas customers, and the profile samples in the corner are about to be sent to Southeast Asia.
Who would have thought that this company, which has been deeply involved in the domestic building materials market for more than ten years, knew nothing about “going overseas” two years ago.
“Domestic competition is fierce. I wanted to transform before but didn’t understand the foreign trade process.” Liu Jingyuan, head of the company’s foreign trade department, said frankly. Later, with the exclusive help of the Commerce Bureau, they crossed the threshold. “From process training and talent docking to exhibition subsidies and on-site guidance, government departments escorted us throughout the process and helped us get our first overseas order.”
In order to enable new entities to “dare to go overseas and be able to go overseas,” Huai’an has established a foreign trade potential enterprise cultivation database to provide full-process business training and market resource docking for local enterprises willing to go overseas.
From January to July 2025, the Huai’an Municipal Commerce Bureau further promoted the “Huai’an Products Going Overseas” action, organized a total of 50 policy and business training and supply and demand docking activities, promoted more than 200 sub-enterprises to participate in 140 domestic and overseas exhibitions, and obtained more than 50 million US dollars in intended orders.
The vigorous development of new business formats such as cross-border e-commerce has opened up new channels for Huai’an’s foreign trade.
“In the past, when I was an OEM, I only earned a few yuan in processing fees for a tool; now I am a cross-border e-commerce company, facing consumers directly, and my profits have tripled, and I can optimize products independently.” In the cross-border e-commerce operations workshop of Huai’an Yuchuang Tools Co., Ltd., the operators keep an eye on the online platform, and the workers are busy packaging hand tools for shipment to North America.
Liang Yueya, head of the company’s finance department, said that in the process of corporate transformation, the commercial departments at the municipal and district levels have established a full-cycle cultivation system. They not only cooperate with e-commerce platforms to launch free online operation courses and conduct special training on a regular basis, but also organize legal lectures on overseas intellectual property rights protection and introduce special subsidy policies for overseas trademark registrations, which have effectively reduced the financial burden of corporate brand building.
In 2025, Huaian will have 6 companies and 13 brands selected into the provincial key cross-border e-commerce brand library, ranking first in northern Jiangsu.
From “not being able to go overseas” to “selling globally”, more and more Huai’an enterprises are riding the wave of global trade more steadily and further.
