Order Surge and Workforce Instability in China's Holiday Fulfillment Season

In China, the weeks leading up to Chinese New Year represent one of the most concentrated fulfillment periods of the year. Holiday shopping compresses demand into a narrow window, while at the same time frontline warehouse workers, line-haul drivers, and last-mile couriers begin returning home. Order volumes increase sharply, but workforce stability declines. This creates operational pressure across warehousing and distribution networks, requiring structural solutions rather than short-term adjustments.

Image source：New Gansu - Gansu Economic Daily. Photo by correspondent Yang Xiao

Chinese New Year demand is highly concentrated

Chinese New Year shopping brings multiple product categories into the same release period, including gift boxes, snacks, alcohol, fresh food, ready-to-cook meals, and household goods. Orders tend to include multiple SKUs, small quantities per line, and strict delivery deadlines. The challenge lies not in total annual volume, but in the intensity of throughput within a limited timeframe.

Data from China’s State Post Bureau shows that during the 2025 Chinese New Year period, 8.65 billion parcels were delivered, representing a 35% year-on-year increase. In the week before Chinese New Year 2026, parcel volume reached 4.686 billion, averaging nearly 670 million parcels per day. At the macro level, total express parcel volume in 2024 reached 174.5 billion, up approximately 21% year-on-year. As the overall base continues to grow, peak-season pressure increases proportionally. The Chinese New Year surge is a recurring, predictable event occurring at an expanding scale.

Workforce stability decreases during the same period

Warehouse operations rely on experienced operators for picking accuracy, exception handling, packing standards, and dock coordination. In the period leading up to Chinese New Year, experienced workers often leave earlier than usual, team structures become fragmented, and shift flexibility decreases. Temporary labor can fill numerical gaps, but skill levels and coordination efficiency do not immediately match those of established teams.

Research from MIT’s supply chain programs highlights that Chinese New Year combines large-scale population movement with logistics congestion, creating widespread labor and transportation constraints. For warehouses, this means operational stability may be affected internally and across upstream and downstream networks at the same time.

Labor expansion alone cannot ensure operational stability

Increasing overtime or hiring temporary workers can raise short-term output, but operational consistency becomes more difficult to maintain. Lower experience levels impact picking and verification accuracy, packing flow, and dock coordination. The delivery window before Chinese New Year is limited, reducing the opportunity to correct errors. Maintaining stable throughput and accuracy therefore becomes more important than simply increasing headcount.

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Automation supports structural stability in fulfillment operations

Automation provides a structured approach to maintaining throughput stability during concentrated demand periods. High-density storage systems, standardized goods-to-person picking, and automated sortation help transform variable manual output into predictable system performance. Modular system architecture and intelligent orchestration enable capacity adjustments based on engineered scalability rather than recruitment speed. Automated scanning and data-driven verification maintain consistent accuracy levels across varying workforce conditions. Automation in this context supports rhythm control, workload balancing, and predictable output across peak periods.

Typical Chinese New Year scenarios and automation deployment approaches

The Chinese New Year season includes multiple operational models. Each scenario requires a tailored automation strategy.

Scenario 1: Comprehensive e-commerce warehouses with increased gift-box and multi-SKU orders. These warehouses manage high SKU density combined with complex order composition. Large gift boxes and mixed-item orders extend picking paths and increase wave coordination complexity. A suitable approach involves high-density bin-based automated storage such as multi-level tote shuttle systems or compact AS/RS structures with dynamic slotting strategies to position high-velocity Chinese New Year SKUs closer to dispatch zones. At the picking stage, goods-to-person systems or mobile-robot-assisted workstations reduce operator travel distance and standardize task execution. Downstream automated sortation supports carrier and route separation. This structure stabilizes picking and dispatch performance in multi-SKU environments.

Scenario 2: Food, fresh, and ready-meal operations with strict time and batch requirements. In these environments, timing and traceability are critical. High-density automated storage combined with FIFO logic ensures batch accuracy. Automated material handling systems, including conveyors, vertical lifts, and outbound buffer zones, reduce internal transfer time and support steady dispatch flow. Integrated scanning and traceability systems embed compliance into daily operations. Automation deployment focuses on reducing dwell time and strengthening batch management during compressed release windows.

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Transforming Fresh Food Logistics With Proven Shuttle Solution

Scenario 3: Livestream and short-video commerce with high order volatility. Livestream campaigns generate sharp demand spikes within short periods. Warehouses must respond quickly without relying solely on emergency labor expansion. Fast-access automated storage for high-velocity SKUs, combined with flexible mobile robot fleets or modular picking cells, increases parallel processing capacity. High-speed sortation systems with buffer staging areas allow staged order release to prevent congestion. Automation deployment in this scenario emphasizes scalability and dynamic workload distribution.

Proven Automation Expertise

Chinese New Year represents a concentrated operational period for China’s e-commerce logistics sector. Parcel volumes continue to expand, while workforce stability declines during the same timeframe. Maintaining fulfillment reliability requires structured capacity planning and system-level automation. By implementing scalable storage, standardized picking, automated material handling, and data-driven verification, warehouses can sustain stable performance throughout the peak period.

Operating in a market of this scale and complexity requires more than technology alone. Years of experience in high-volume e-commerce environments have built a deep understanding of peak-season dynamics, regional infrastructure differences, and operational variability across industries. With an experienced engineering and project team dedicated to requirement analysis, scenario evaluation, and realistic capacity modeling, tailored solutions can be developed that reflect local market characteristics and withstand real peak-season pressure.