Yueshi Robot (粤十机器人), a startup focusing on autonomous robotics for cold chain storage, has completed a fresh round of financing for an undisclosed amount of money, Chinese media reported today.
The round was led by China Co-Op, a state-owned supplier of agricultural product, daily consumer staples, and wholesale produce.
The latest fundraiser is a follow-on round that came hot on the heels of the previous round, which took place in mid October.
With origins dating back to the planned economy era, China Co-Op is a ministry-level corporation supervised directly by the State Council, China’s cabinet. It recorded revenue of 6.26 trillion yuan (US$856.32 billion) in 2021.
In a statement, Yueshi said its partnership with China Co-Op will help the firm access the domestic cold chain market.
Yueshi provides mobile robots like AGV, AMR and unmanned forklift to plug the labor shortfall in the cold chain industry nationwide.
It is expected to join hands with China Co-Op to help build a smart, automated modern cold chain logistics network for agricultural products.
Theoretically, Yueshi can leverage the strengths of its parent, Qianhai Yueshi, a domestic leader in cold chain logistics, to deploy its autonomous robots to 85% of the cold chain storage spaces across the country.
“Adverse operational environments in cold storage warehouses are likely to lead to icy and slipper floors, and thus cause accidents that result in huge physical injury to operators,” said Zhang Haoran, CTO of Yueshi Robot.
He added cold chain operators face high costs, heightened risks and a labor shortage as employees increasingly shun work in cold storage warehouses out of safety concerns.
All these issues can be tackled by robots such as unmanned forklift, AMR and AGV. These mobile devices are tasked with palletizing, storage, sorting and material handling under the same smart dispatch system.
Unmanned forklifts developed by Yueshi specially for cold storage applications have achieved breakthroughs in hardware lifespan and management software, an official with China Co-Op, was quoted as saying, without revealing his identity.
“(The forklift) has created the conditions for the overhaul of China Co-Op’s cold storage warehouses and optimization of cold chain logistics infrastructure,” the official explained.
