Beijing's largest wholesaler Xinfadi opened its first branch in neighboring Hebei Province on Thursday.

With an annual trade volume of 14 million tonnes of meat, fruit and vegetables, Xinfadi currently has 5,000 wholesalers in a vast swathe of land outside the fourth ring road in southern Beijing.

The new branch is located in Gaobeidian City, Hebei, 84 km south of Beijing.

Covering an area of 138 hectares, the new 5.4-billion-yuan (849 million US dollars) agricultural market boasts 1.4 million square meters of cold storage and trading areas.

The new wholesale market is Beijing's first project aimed at alleviating pressure on the capital's resources and solving "big city illness", which features heavy traffic congestion and high population density.

The area surrounding Xinfadi has been plagued by traffic congestion as long lines of trucks carry goods to the capital. With the new market, Xinfadi will halve the number of wholesalers in Beijing over the next five years.

Xinfadi's new Gaobeidian Branch can help eliminate 5.6 million trucks travelling to Beijing and bring 300,000 wholesale employees out of the city, said Wei Shujian, deputy manager of Xinfadi's Gaobeidian Branch.

He said so far 34 large chain-store supermarkets have sent representatives to the Gaobeidian market, which has registered 4,000 wholesalers.