Online transactions of industrial products buoy e-commerce firms

Buying and selling of industrial products via online platforms could well be the "next blue ocean" in China's e-commerce sector and drive digitalization of global business-to-business sales, a new report said on Tuesday.

The market value of industrial products e-commerce is slated to hit 2.3 trillion yuan ($333 billion) in 2024 from 700 billion yuan last year, global consultancy Bain & Co said in a white paper jointly released with 1688.com, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's B2B trading arm for domestic trade.

That represents a 25 percent to 30 percent compounded annual growth rate during the period, when the e-commerce penetration rate of B2B industrial products is forecast to rise from the current 2 percent to 5 percent in four years.