A shipment of Kenyan fresh flowers made a stopover at the Changsha Huanghua International Airport at 7:00 on July 18. The flowers arrived in Uzbekistan at 23:40 local time after going through the plant transit quarantine at the Changsha Customs Authority.

Entrepot trade refers to the trade mode of transporting goods from one country to another through a third country as a transit point. "Our flowers are harvested directly from African farms and had been sold domestically through general trade. This year we tried entrepot trade, hoping to use Changsha's influence on African trade to sell more African flowers to countries along the Belt and Road," said Huang Zinan, a representative of Xiyue Flowers, an enterprise in the Hunan Pilot Free Trade Zone Changsha Area Yuhua Block.

There are many varieties of African flowers, known for their large buds, long flowering periods, and strong market appeal. In May this year, the China-Africa (Kenya) Agricultural Development Cooperation Fair was held in Nairobi, where Xiyue Flowers signed strategic cooperation agreements with a number of farms in Kenya to expand the import of flowers. In just 13 hours, Kenya Flowers can travel from Nairobi to Changsha, thanks to the increasingly frequent direct flights between China and Kenya.

This is the first entrepot trade of African flowers in Hunan Province. "The flower trade enriches the form of Hunan's trade with Africa and provides a new path for economic and trade development between China and Africa," said a relevant person in charge of the Hunan Pilot Free Trade Zone Changsha Area Yuhua Block.