The three futures delivery warehouses in the city of Hai'an in East China's Jiangsu province – the Shanghai Futures Exchange non-ferrous metal delivery warehouse, the Dalian Commodity Exchange plastic particle delivery warehouse and the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange cotton delivery warehouse – have reportedly made a strong start to the year following a record performance in 2020.

A futures delivery warehouse is a delivery site designated by an exchange for performance of physical delivery against futures contracts. Statistics showed that by the end of February they had achieved a throughput of 142,300 tons, up 11.1 percent year-on-year, paving the way for a robust first quarter.

That growth came in the wake of 2020 when the total throughput of the three futures delivery warehouses exceeded 1 million tons, with a total cargo value of more than 14 billion yuan ($2.15 billion), hitting a new high.

Jiangsu Yinlong Warehousing and Logistics Co Ltd is a regulatory warehouse for the national cotton trading market and a futures trading warehouse of the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange. It is currently in its peak season and the warehouse is currently holding an inventory of 48,000 tons of cotton.

"According to the inbound and outbound situation of commodities in January and February, we will achieve an inbound volume of 80,000 tons this year," said Huang Feiyu, the manager of Yinlong.

In addition, the plastic particle delivery warehouse realized an inbound volume of 39,000 tons and an outbound volume of 19,000 tons in the first two months of 2021. The non-ferrous metal delivery warehouse had 19,000 tons of cargo consigned to storage, with 15,000 tons leaving storage and over 10,000 tons in transit.