ZTO Successfully Completes First Trial Delivery Using a Drone

The drone, developed by a domestic drone producer and custom designed for ZTO, flew 14.0 kilometers (8.7 miles) from ZTO's sorting facility in Le Qing county, Zhejiang Province to the office building of an enterprise customer located in an economic development park in the same county.

SHANGHAI, July 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ZTO Express (Cayman) Inc. (NYSE: ZTO) ("ZTO" or the "Company"), a leading express delivery company in China, today announced that it successfully completed its first trial delivery using a drone in an industrial park in Zhejiang Province.


The drone, developed by a domestic drone producer and custom designed for ZTO, flew 14.0 kilometers (8.7 miles) from ZTO's sorting facility in Le Qing county, Zhejiang Province to the office building of an enterprise customer located in an economic development park in the same county. The drone used in the trial delivery has a maximum range of 30.0 kilometers (18.6 miles), is equipped with a 25-liter (6.6 gallon) container, a maximum load carrying capacity of 10.0 kg (22.0 pounds) and is preprogrammed to fly to its destination and does not require a remote control.

"Drone delivery is an innovative new application of technology that we are developing to further optimize and increase the efficiency of last-mile delivery," commented Mr. Meisong Lai, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ZTO. "This test successfully demonstrated that we can shave 60% off our traditional delivery times using drones. Using traditional ground transportation, this delivery would have taken approximately 50 minutes when taking traffic conditions, gate checks, wait times for elevators, etc., into consideration. We were able to do this in less than 20 minutes using a drone. We believe that drones can be best used for the delivery of parcels to rural areas in the future as they can improve accessibility, ease labor shortages, and reduce logistical costs and delivery time of the entire network."

About ZTO Express (Cayman) Inc.

ZTO Express (Cayman) Inc. (NYSE: ZTO) ("ZTO" or the "Company") is a leading express delivery company in China and one of the largest express delivery companies globally, in terms of total parcel volume in 2016. ZTO provides express delivery service as well as other value-added logistics services through its extensive and reliable nationwide network coverage in China.

ZTO operates a highly scalable network partner model, which the Company believes is best suited to support the significant growth of e-commerce in China. The Company leverages its network partners to provide pickup and last-mile delivery services, while controlling the mission-critical line-haul transportation and sorting network within the express delivery service value chain.

For more information, please visit http://ir.zto.com.

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