(Seoul=Yonhap News) Reporter Kim Yoon-gu = Last week, N Mart, a medium-sized supermarket located in Gyeonggi Province, concluded a new potato deal with a farming cooperative in Jeju Island through the online wholesale market.
Both parties conducted the transaction directly on the online wholesale market platform, bypassing the middle distribution stage, and the products were shipped directly from the production site to the consumer.
This transaction is an example of the growing trend of producers and consumers directly connecting with each other across regions through the online wholesale market.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, which operates the online wholesale market, announced on the 6th that participation from food-related supermarkets, franchises, and online retailers has been rapidly expanding.
The online retail platform OnBricks established a system to directly deliver Chungbuk's stevia cherry tomatoes to consumers by sourcing them from the production site through the online wholesale market. As a result, the distribution cost rate decreased by 14.3 percentage points compared to the previous offline transaction, and the farmers' income increased by 7.7%.
KG Chemical [001390], which supplies fresh fruits for beverages to franchise cafes, successfully switched to direct transactions this summer by sourcing watermelons directly from the production site through the online wholesale market, instead of obtaining them from the wholesale market.
The online wholesale market has 5,300 sellers and buyers nationwide, and the cumulative transaction amount for this year surpassed 1 trillion won in the past three days.
Park Eun-young, Director of the Distribution Policy Division at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, said, "Since we relaxed the seller registration criteria in September, we have seen positive changes such as new registrations and successful transactions from small and medium-sized businesses. We will continue to strive to revitalize the online wholesale market by closely examining the needs of the field."