The city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province reports that it is having to increase the number cargo flights to Russia, from twice a week to once every day to deal with the increase in online consumption after China’s "Singles' Day", Nov 11, its s biggest online shopping day.

The city says that more than 1 million express parcels are being transshipped through Harbin to Russia, or more than 30 percent of all the e-commerce trade between China and Russia and that AliExpress, which was started by e-commerce giant Alibaba and is one of the most popular e-commerce sites in Russia, handled 21.24 million orders, a record high.

In commenting on the development, Ran Yan, who handles publicity for Ruston Express, a Harbin logistics company, noted, “We’re going to deliver about 1 million parcels to Russia because of the Double 11 shopping gala, about double the amount for the same period last year and equal to the amount for the whole of last month.”

Ran says Ruston has had to double its number of employees and that they will have to work overtime for at least a week just to deal with the peak. Part of the reason for the surge is AliExpress’s online-to offline (O2O) service, with offline promotions in Russia before Nov 11.

Another reason is the Russian shopping habits at year’s end, when there’s usually a peak shopping season in December to get ready for Christmas and the express parcels from China take one or two weeks to reach their Russian destination.